| Told by | Somjit Dasgupta |
| Obtained by | Sanjoy Bandopadhyay and Troilee Dutta |
| Date | 14 July, 2015 |
| Place | Residence of Somjit Dasgupta Prof. Sanjoy Bandopadhyay, 3/1/1D, Padmapukur Road, Kolkata 700092 |
| About Somjit Dasgupta | Disciple of Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra. Preserving rare musical instruments including the instruments belonged to Pt. Radhika Mohan Maitra. He plays different instruments like Sarod, Surshringar, Mohan Veena, etc. |
| Tags | Surshringar, Vishnupur gharana, Nrishinha Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Pramathanath Bandyopadhyay, Veen, Surabab, Bhowanipur, Wajed Ali Shah, Kashim Ali Khan, 1924, Bhimpalashree, Madh Jor, Nasiruddin Khan. |
| Language | Bengali |
Somjit Dasgupta speaks :
Verbatim:
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Verbatim: Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee
Translation:
Pandit Radhika Mohan Moitra’s three unique Surshringars and their cultivation was itself a story of that era. His first surshringar was the common one with broad plate and big gourd which he usually played with Ustad Ali Akbar khan. And the other two were designed by him by intermixing different rare instruments. That was supposed to be happened when he came across stalwart instrumentalists of that century specially the musicians of Vishnupur Gharana.
Radhika Mohan Moitra had close association with many noteworthy musicians. Therefore, many students of those noted musicians had come to Radhu Babu for Taalim. Among them, one promising student was Nrisingha Prosad Mukhopadhyay, Son-in-law of great instrumentalist of Vishnupur Gharana, Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay. Nrisingha Prosad used to play Surshringar and Sur-rabab; While Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay was expertise in instruments like Veena, Surbahar, Sitar, Surshringar and was also an efficient Dhrupad singer. He was very down-to-earth musician who always engrossed in music.
He used to live near the bank of river Ganges, not far away from the maternal house of Radhu Babu in Chakraberiya. Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay had taken rigorous taalim from several musicians like Kashim Ali Khan, Court musician of wajid ali shah and also from eminent Hindu instrument players.
One incident relating Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay is worth mentioning here, though it was not happened in Kolkata. It was a historical event in the history of Indian music. In 1924, Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay got invitation in Ahmadabad Music Conference. Before his performance there, all the musicians attended the Conference came to an inference that Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay would perform any composition from Jatra which was much vogue in Bengal at that time. But with great astonishment, Pramatha Nath took five long hours rendering Alap and Madh Jod in Bhimpalashi and after that he modestly announce if the listeners were interested to listen further, he would definitely play the next following day. Stalwart musicians of different Gharanas like Nasiruddin Khan Dagar, Tansen Pande were amazed and sway away with the performance. After that mind blowing performance, several students started coming from outside Bengal especially from Pune to take lessons from Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay was fascinated with the knowledge and playing techniques of Radhika Mohan Moitra. So he handed over his favourite disciple and Son-in-law Nrisingha Prosad Mukhopadhyay to Radhu Babu for taalim. He was then 96 years old. Radhu Babu was a devoted listener of Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay from his early life. Therefore, he took the responsibility very seriously to train Nrisingha Prosad after the death of Pramatha Nath Bandyapadhyay. Radhu Babu was very meticulous on his teaching process. He himself started practicing all three types of Surshringar, so that Nrisingha Prosad Mukhopadhyay would receive the best taalim. Samarendra Nath Shikdar had recorded many compositions of Nrisingha Prosad Mukhopadhyay in all India Radio but all of them were in wire tape recording, so none of them can be restored in present days.
Paraphrased by: Dr Suranjita Paul
Picture Courtesy: Google
Edited & Designed: Ms. Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee
Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University