For more than three decades, Ruma Brizita Biswas had sung several popular liturgical and devotional songs with incorrect notations and lyrics because nobody taught her the correct versions.
“One of my favorite songs is Jishu ghrinar rajjye enechho tomar prem (Jesus, you brought your love to the kingdom of hatred), but I had been singing it incorrectly all my life as ‘Jesus brought love to your kingdom of hatred.’ The same happened to other songs as well,” Biswas, a Bengali Catholic, told..
The 40-year-old is choir leader of St. Joseph’s Cathedral Parish of Khulna Diocese in southern Bangladesh. The parish has about 5,000 Catholics.
A church-sponsored mu-sic training program in national capital Dhaka has helped her correct her wrong lyrics, she said.
Biswas was one of 50 participants in the national training on liturgy and church music by the Catholic bishops’ commission for liturgy and prayer at Holy Spirit Major Seminary from June 3-9. They included two priests, 11 nuns and laypeople representing eight Catholic dioceses of Bangladesh.