Hindi Rabindrasangeet to reach audiences in Europe, Asia

Rabindrasangeet exponent Santanu Roychoudhury’s musical journey began in 2008, when a private TV channel requested him to translate Tagore’s songs and perform for their audiences on screen. When Roychoudhury informed his guru, Pandit Subir Chakraborty of the Gwalior gharana about this development, he said that it was impossible to translate Tagore in any other language from Bengali. But then he started trans creating the songs and the first song he chose was ‘Megh bole che jabo jabo’.

“When 10 songs were ready, HMV Sa Re Ga Ma released the album, Musafir in 2011. Soon, the Ministry of Culture rewarded our effort by asking me to perform at UNESCO, Paris. In front of a 5000 strong international audience I sang Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, in a new format”, Roychoudhury told Millennium Post.

This was followed by a performance at Vigyan Bhavan and the songs gradually became popular in UP, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Twenty more songs were added to his repertoire and resulted in two albums produced by Times Music, titled ‘Deewana’ in 2013 and ‘Intezaar’ in 2015. Ten new Tagore songs have again been prepared by the singer and are awaiting release in the public domain. The album is likely to hit the stores by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, at the behest of the Ministry of External Affairs, Roychoudhury recently performed at the ASEAN -India Cultural and Civilisational Link’s 2nd International conference at Jakarta. The audience was treated to 15 unique Tagore’s songs. The musical presentation was based on the poet’s ‘Java Ja tr ir Patra’, which literally means “Letters of a traveller on his visit to Java”. It is a collection of 21 letters, written by Tagore originally in the Bengali language, while he was paying a visit to the South East Asia in 1927. “The songs were Hindi transcreations of ‘Mor Beena Uthe kon shure baaje’, ‘Dan riye acho tumi’, ‘Anandadhara bahi che bhu bane’ and ‘pagla ha oar badal dine’, Roychoudhury added. Interestingly, during July – October 1927, Rabindranath toured Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar extensively. He was fascinated with the idea that the Island of Indonesia , especially Java and Bali contained remnants of the ancient India. It was a cultural mission from Visvabharati in Santiniketan. The mission had two aims. The first was to study the remains of Indian civilisation in the antiquarian relics as well as the life and living arts in Indonesia.

The second aim was to bring about close cultural cooperation between India and these regions through an appreciation of Visva-bharati.

As for Roychoudhury, during the last twenty five years, he has performed in several parts of India, USA, Canada, UK, Bangladesh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Paris.