 Music has a distinct place in the cultural life of Bengal.Besides Bishnupur Gharana ,and the folk songs of Bengal like Baul,Bhatiali, Jari gan, Sari gan, Alkaph etc.there exist different style of Bangla vocal music .viz. Kirtan , Tappa, Thumri. Above all, Bengali music has been enriched by the composition and music of Rabindranath, Nazrul, Atulprasad, Ramprasad Dwijendralal and Rajanikanta wich are popoularly known as Rabindrasangeet, Nazrul geeti, Atulprasadi, Ramprasadi, Dwijendra geeti and Rajanikanter gan respectively. Tagore alone composed 3000 songs in which he tried to explore the themes of or relating to religion or religious belief and also themes relating to divine and human love. Tagore’s songs earned a good deal of appreciation among the people in the West and they remain extremely popular among all classes of Bengali society.
Some of the greatest musicians of Bengal are the following:
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Lalon Shah Fakir was born in 1775 in a place called Kusthiaa in Bangladesh. He is perhaps the best known Baul singer. The elements of Vaishnavism and Sufism are combined in his songs. He had a host of disciples, both Hindu and Muslims. Lalon Fakir died in 1891.
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Lalon Shah Fakir |
 Sample of Lalon Shah Fakir's Song |
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Pt. Jnan Prakash Ghosh - more popularly known as Jnan Babu, the great tabla maestro - was born in Calcutta in 1912. Having born into a family, which was musically inclined, Jnan Ghosh had the privilegde of having training under the tutelage of many eminent exponents like Girija Shankar Chakrabarty, Mohammed Sagir Khan, Mohammed Dabir Khan and Ustad Majid Khan.
He learnt tabla playing for 20 long years under the supervision of Ustad Majid Khan. Later, Ghosh became an institution by himself, and trained three generations of tabla players and vocalists. Many of them turned out to be renowned musicians of all times. To name some are Kanai Datta, Shankar Ghosh, Shyamal Bose and many others who were disciples of the legendary tabla player. |
Jnan Prakash Ghosh |
Pandit Ghosh founded the Sourav Academy of Music and Dance, which is one of the most renowned music academy of Calcutta. Being a versatile genius, Jnan babu also scored music for a number of Bengali films. For fifteen years Jnan babu also worked with AIR as a music director. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his contribution to music. He died on February 18th, 1997.
| Sample of Pt. Jnan Prakash Ghosh's Song |
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Alauddin Khan was born in a humble peasant family of Tripura in Eastern India. He ran away from home when he was seven and went to Calcutta with the aim of learning music. He achieved his goal after undergoing great hardship.
After long wandering, he came to Rampur, where he became the disciple of the famous veena exponent Wazir Khan. Ustad Alauddin Khan was described by friends and disciples as “a saint among musicians” “a teacher without parallel,” “an encyclopaedia of classical music”, and “the greatest instrumentalist of the age.” |
Allauddin Khan |
It was in 1911, when Alauddin Khan was asked by Raja of Maihar to take charge of the Maihar Band, the ustad established his home in Maihar. There he was also the principal of the music college. The Ustad, whose age was estimated variously from a hundred to a hundred and twenty years, spent his whole life in the midst of creativity. He had a vast repertoire of rare ragas and rare compositions. Some of the ragas evolved by him are Prabhatkali, Sobhavati, Hem Behag and Madan Manjar. Alauddin Khan was known to one and all as “Baba”, “the saint”, because of his simple, sincere and devout nature. He produced some of the finest musical talents like Ali Akbar Khan (his son), Ravi Shankar (his son-in-law), Nikhil Banerjee, Pannalal Ghosh etc. The meastro passed away in his house at Maihar on September 6, 1972.
| Sample of Alauddin Khan's Music |
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Ali Akbar Khan, the famous sarod maestro belonging to Sri Baba Alauddin Seni Gharana of Maihar and Rampur, is one of today's most highly skilled classical musicians of India.
He was born on April 14, 1922 in Bengal, in a region that is now Bangladesh. He began his music career under the tutelage of his father, the legendary sarod maestro Alauddin Khan at the age of three. After long ten years of serious practice, he gave his first public performance in Allahabad at age thirteen. In 1943, Ali Akbar was appointed as the court musician of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. |
Ali Akbar Khan |
Khan’s mastery of the intrument helped him in presenting Indian music to Western audiences. He performed in a number of international concerts and thereby sowed the seeds for the wave of popularity of Indian music in the West. It was after the popular acceptance of Indian music in the West, Khan scored music for a number of Western films including Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha. Khan also composed music for Satyajit Ray’s Devi as well as the first Merchant-Ivory film, The Householder etc.
| Sample of Ali Akbar Khan's Music |
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For popularising Indian Classical music and for imparting proper training to truly tallented students, he established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta in 1956. Recognizing the westerners' unusual love for Indian classical music, he established a branch of the same college in Marin County in California in 1960. This college provides training in North Indian Classical Music at the highest professional level.
Top Ali Akbar Khan has been a recipient of several prestigious awards like honorary doctorates from, Viswa Bharati University, California Institute of the Arts, New England Conservatory of Music, University of Delhi, University of Dacca, Rabindra Bharati University.
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Ravi Shankar was born in 1920 in Benares into a Bengali Brahmin family, and is an illustrious brother of the famous dancer Uday Shankar.
Ravi Shankar had great inclination towards music from his very childhood, and spent his early childhood, singing and playing the harmonium, before he met his guru Baba Alauddin Khan. While under the tutelage of Baba Alauddin Khan, Ravi Shankar whole heartedly devoted himself to Sitar and after practising seriously for several years, he veritably became the most successful Indian art musician. |
Ravi Shankar |
He emerged with a highly creative style of his own. In a long and glorious musical career, Ravi Shankar's music has been marked by his mastery and command of ragas and it is this command which helped him to create ragas of his own, such as Ahir Lalit, Nat Bhairav, Rasiya, Pancham Se Gara, Gangeshwari, Rangeshwari, Parameshwari, Banjara and many others. Thus his contribution to the art reaches far beyond the frontiers of India and made Indian music famous world-wide. In 1989, this remarkable musician celebrated his 50th year of concertising. He passed on his musical knowledge to people of next generation. Many of disciples are now very succesful concert artists and composers. He is still one of the greatest performers of Indian classic muic.
| Sample of Ravi Shankar's Music |
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Pandit Nikhil Banerjee was a real phenomenon of recent Indian music. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest sitar players of his generation.
Having born in 1931 into a family of Bengali Brahmins, who were hereditary professional musicians, he grew up surrounded by music and real connoisseurs of the art. He began learning the sitar at the age of six from his father, but, like Ravi Shankar, he also got much of his training from the great Ustad Alauddin Khan, remaining with him for seven years. |
Nikhil Banerjee |
He also learnt from Alauddin Khan saheb's son, the legendary Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. His concert career began in 1954 and continued, with greater success, until his untimely death at the age of 54 in 1986. His refined style combined the best of all the major schools of sitar playing.
| Sample of Nikhil Banerjee's Music |
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Hemanta was born in Benares on June, 1920. He could reproduce any musical and rhythmic phrase when he was very young. After coming to Calcutta, he was simultaneously continuing with his studies and his music but gradually he got more engrossed in music than his studies, as he had an underlying desire of becoming a professional singer.
After finishing his school, Hemanta joined the dept. of Chemical engineering, in Jadavpur University, abiding by his father’s directives, but his strong desire to sing made him an University dropout. In 1934, Hemanta made his first debut in the All India Radio (AIR) with the song Amar gaanete elo nabarupe chirontoni . A few years after his first recording, he released his first record containing some of the popular Bengali songs like Janite jadi go tumi and Balo go balo more. |
Hemanta Mukhopadhyay |
He began singing Rabindrasangeet in the style of Punkaj Mullick, but soon developed his own style of singing Tagore songs. As his musical genius prompted him to respect and cultivate all kinds of good music, he proved his excellence by scoring and directing film music, too, for Bengalee films like Purbaraag and Abhijaatri, and later scored music for a number of Hindi films like Jaal, Nagin, Bees Saal Baad, Khamoshi etc. He was honoured with awards like the Sangeet Natak Academy Award, a D.Litt. by Vishwa-Bharati, and died on September 26, 1989.
| Sample of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay's Song |
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