Ipswich’s Bangladeshi community reconnected with their roots at a free festival in Alexandra Park.
The eighth annual One Big Multicultural Festival, organised by the Ipswich Bangladeshi Support Centre, saw acts from around the world, including Africa, China and India, perform in front of an 8,000 strong crowd on Sunday.
Whilst BBC Radio Suffolk’s Wayne Bavin once again hosted the free festival, it was the global singers and dancers who stole the show.
Bangladeshi Support Centre manager Shayra Begum said: “I think the Bengali singers went down the best, they finished off their set with a song called ‘I used to be Bengali’ which all the ex-pats loved, they used to be Bengali but now they are British, that really resonated with them.
“This year has been our best numbers wise, we hold about 3,000 people in here at any one time but estimates show that we’ve had about 8,000 people in here in total.”
The festival also featured Bengali and Indian singer Joyita Chowdhury, a regular on Bangladeshi TV channels and Radio Rajasthan and the Heritage Brass Band and singer, Shorif, who has appeared in UK talent shows.
Mrs Begum was delighted with the event and keen to look ahead to future festivals.
She said: “It has been a really good day so far, I’m too tired at the moment to really start thinking about next year but it would be brilliant to get to 10 years of this festival, the numbers keep growing each year so we want to keep growing.”
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