Rezwana Chowdhury Banya

Rezwana Choudhury Bannya
Bannya performing in Long Island, NY, USA (April 2012).
Background information
Native name	রেজওয়ানা চৌধুরী বন্যা
Born	January 13 Rangpur, Bangladesh
Genres	Rabindra Sangeet
Occupation(s)	singer, associate professor
Instruments	vocal, harmonium, esraj
Website	www.rezwanabannya.com

Rezwana Choudhury Bannya is a Bangladeshi singer. She is an exponent of Rabindra Sangeet, the songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. She has won several major awards for the genre.

Rezwana was born in Rangpur, Bangladesh to her parents Mazharuddin Khan and Ismat Ara Khan. Since her childhood, she had been attracted to music which quickly grew into a passion with the encouragement and help of her parents. Her early singing lessons started with her uncle Abdul Ali that continued later under the tutelage of Sanjita Khatun and Atiqul Islam at Chhayanat and Bulbul Academy of Fine Arts (BAFA) in Dhaka. As she continued taking lessons in music and singing, she also joined the Economics Program at the university after completion of her schooling. However, soon her inner- self-came to the realization that music was her destiny. She received a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) to study in Santiniketan, the university that was founded by Tagore himself on his philosophy of complete natural learning. Her true love for Rabindrasangeet started at Santiniketan and only became deeper by the days under the loving care of all of her gurus such as Kanika Bandyopadhyay (affectionately known as Mohordi), Nilima Sen, Shoilajaranjan Mazumdar, Santidev Ghosh, Gora Sarbadhikary, Manju Bandyopadhyay and Asesh Bandyopadhyay.

Bannya is currently an associate professor in the Department of Music at the University of Dhaka. She also founded Shurer Dhara in 1992, a school for learning music in Dhaka.

In 2010, in order to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, she brought out a complete audio version of Gitobitan, called Sruti Gitobitan.