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Participants: Students of Sangeet Bhavan, Nemai Chand Baral, Subinay Roy, Ram Kumar Chatterjee, Rajeswari Dutta, Mrs. Mangalam Mani, Aloka Chakravarty, Geeta Ghalak, Amar Paul, Pankaj Mullick, Santidev Ghosh, Debabrata Biswas |
"Dr.Partha Ghosh here
presents a very perceptive and revealing survey of the major varieties
of Rabindranath's two thousand and more songs to show how their music was
influenced by Indian and sometimes by western tradition and yet achieved
a uniqueness of their own."
He has selected for his examples some of the most representative of Rabindranath's songs and has shown an equally fine sense of judegement in choosing the models which suggested to the poet ht e music he gave them. The songs are offered by some of the best of our Artistes. As a poet Rabindranath is the inheritor of the great traditions of an ancient civilisation and he also creatively responded to the traditions of the West. While the poet loved to be himself and would never allow his poetry to be the echo of an old voice he did believe in receiving from others although he was capable of creating out of what he had received something that bore the stamp of his own genius and personality. Actually he did not even hesitate to admit that there was an influence of the West on the modern Indian mind. The breadth of inspiration coming from the West he once remarked 'has kindled the original spark in us into a flame.' And here Rabindranath would say this about his music too. As a composer he was brave in borrowing from others because he knew that his debt would not be a fetter but would give him only a new freedom to create a new form 'only the weak are afraid to borrow', he once said, because they know that they never will be able to repay their debt in their own currency. Dr.R.K. Dasgupta
(former Rabindra Professor,
University of Delhi
and Director, National Library)
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