Kashfia
Billah, a Project Manager in the Structures department at Michael Baker
resides in Princeton, New Jersey. Originally a native of Bangladesh, she
first came to the United States in 1982 with her husband Yusuf Billah to
pursue higher education. Alongside her engineering career, Kashfia continued
to nurture her Indian Music training. She had started vocal training in
Indian classical music at age 13 in Bangladesh that temporarily halted when
she came to America. However that was not for long, as the growing native
culture and her love for Indian music encouraged her to perform in local
cultural organizations all over the Tri-State region and in other states.
Kashfia’s expertise is in songs of Nazrul Islam who is known as the famous
rebel poet of Bengal. Nazrul has a wide array of composition rich in
diversity of theme, style, mood and beat. Some of his songs are founded deep
in classical ragas while some are simple folkish and modern. Perhaps
Kashfia’s diverse interest of balancing her engineering career in USA
simultaneously with her Indian music hobby derives inspiration from Nazrul.
Kashfia produced her first album of Nazrul song collection in 1997, the
recording, mastering and production of which were done in New Jersey.
