Introducing BSM: Reclaiming the Sonic Self Through Listening

By Shariful Islam

What happens when music is treated not only as performance—but as a way of understanding identity, participation, and human experience?

Over the past several years, alongside my work as a violinist, composer, orchestra conductor, and educator, I have been developing an evolving research and artistic framework called Bangladeshi Spiritual Music (BSM).

BSM does not propose a new musical genre.

It is not a therapeutic system, and it does not claim that spiritual music contains hidden scientific truths.

Instead, BSM asks a different question:

How might sound help people reconnect with memory, attention, embodiment, participation, and cultural imagination?

Rooted primarily in the philosophical and sonic traditions associated with Lalon Fakir and Shah Abdul Karim, BSM explores how listening can become an active practice rather than passive consumption.

At the center of this work is an idea I call the Sonic Self.

The Sonic Self proposes that identity is not formed only through language or thought, but also through repeated sonic experience—through listening, participation, improvisation, memory, and collective musical life.

Through BSM, I am interested in building bridges between:

– artistic practice
– embodied listening
– music education
– orchestral thinking
– cultural reconstruction
– and emerging conversations in cognition and neuroscience

This framework remains exploratory and open to revision.

Its purpose is not to prove tradition through science.

Its purpose is to generate new questions.

Questions such as:

• How do communities learn to listen?
• How does participation shape musical identity?
• Can local sonic practices create new forms of artistic research?
• How can music education move beyond reproduction toward imagination?

In practice, BSM informs how I compose, teach, rehearse, listen, and design musical experiences.

This project is currently evolving through writing, experimentation, artistic research, and interdisciplinary dialogue.

If you are interested in collaboration, discussion, artistic research, education, or experimental music projects, I would be glad to connect.

— Shariful Islam
Violinist | Composer | Educator | Artistic Researcher