On the second death anniversary of guitar maestro Ayub Bachchu, Bangladesh Copyright Office unveiled the first-ever digital archive on music. The event took place on 18 October evening at the Bangladesh Copyright Office conference room.
The website is named after Ayub Bachchu’s music studio called AB Kitchen. From now on visitors will be able to listen to the 272 songs of Ayub Bachchu archived at the site as well as read about the legend, watch videos, and photographs browsing abkitchen.org address.
Registrar of Copyrights, Zafor Raza Chowdhury told in an interview that when they began the online copyrights registration process in 2017, it was Ayub Bachchu who first applied for it. He had been to their sessions but left untimely keeping some of the works undone. So, to commemorate his step they took the initiative to build a digital archive of his works.
After the death of Ayub Bachchu on 18 October 2018, some members of his band LRB took several failed attempts to run the band with different vocalists and musicians including Balam and Mizan creating disgust and confusion among the audience. When in several interviews Registrar of Copyrights, Zafor Raza Chowdhury told that the band and its logo were registered by the band leader Ayub Bachchu before his sudden demise. The rights were reserved by him and his family accordingly. However, some works regarding the songs were ongoing which Ayub Bacchu’s daughter Fairuz Saffra Ayub and son Ahnaf Tazwar Ayub undertook to accomplish their father’s dream.
According to the family’s press release (in August), activities in the name of band LRB would be a violation of Bangladesh copyright law and a punishable offense. In it Fairuz and Ahnaf stated that he (Ayub Bachchu) was working on copyrighting his compositions in his last days. After facing several obstacles, he was on the final stage of registering his creations. Unfortunately, his untimely demise halted the process.
