Pramatha Tagore - Sarode
Rohen Bose - Tabla
Come join us at the Chhandayan Center for an evening of Hindustani instrumental music performed on the Sarode by Pramatha Tagore accompanied on tabla by Rohen Bose. The performance will also be streamed live.
Pramatha Tagore
Pramantha Tagore’s research and scholarship explore the interplay between music, race, and cultural politics in the long nineteenth century. A prominent emphasis of his work has been on the historical practices of music-making in modern South Asia, in particular, colonial Bengal, and how these practices help shape cultural identities. He is presently a Neubauer Family Foundation Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Music, and holds simultaneous positions as Honorary Fellow and Associate Director of the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies International (CNCSI) based at Durham University and the International Nineteenth Century Studies Association (INCSA). He is also a Ralph Nicholas South Asia Fellow at the University of Chicago’s International House, and a 2023-24 Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Centre at George Mason University. His previous appointment at the University of Chicago was supported through a generous grant from the Fulbright Foundation via a Nehru-Fulbright Visiting Doctoral Fellowship.
On the musical side, Pramantha is a professional Sarod player trained in the Maihar-Senia style of Hindustani Music. For over two decades, he has received instruction on the Sarod, vocal music, and other instruments from renowned teachers in India through the guru-shishya parampara (master-disciple) system. As a musician, educator, and performer, he has collaborated with artists and ensembles spread across a wide array of genres and music practices, including those from South Asia, Indonesia, the United States, the Middle East, and Australia. Examples of his collaborations include those with the International Academy of Musical Arts (IAMS), the Australian Red Cross, Creative Victoria, Chicago Mehfil, and the Consolato Generale d’Italia, to name a few. He is also empaneled with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and is an affiliated artiste with All India Radio, the national broadcasting service of India.
Pramantha’s recent publications include “Songs for the Empress: Queen Victoria in the Music History of Colonial Bengal,” Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Forthcoming); “Pure or Tainted: Representing a Source of Colonial Bengali-English Music in RISM,” Fontis Artis Musicae, 69:3, 229–251 (with Christina Linklater and Emerson Morgan); “Listening Through the Walls: Music-making in the Historic Houses of Rabindranath Tagore,” in Sound Heritage: Making Music Matter in Historic Houses, eds. Jeanice Brooks, Matthew Stephens, Wiebke Thormählen (Routledge, 2021); “From the Private to the Public: Hindustani Raga Music in Colonial Calcutta. 1800-1945,” in Kolkata in Space, Time and Imagination Vol. II, eds. Melitta Waligora and Anuradha Roy (Primus 2020); “The Cultural Evolution of Performance: Representing Shakespeare Through Jazz,” International Journal of Cultural Studies and Social Sciences, 3:6, 144–160. Highlights of his ongoing research have been presented at conferences and invited talks organized by the Society for Ethnomusicology, Fulbright Research Speakers Series, The Bhawanipur Education Society College, Archive of North Indian Classical Music (ANICM, Jadavpur), Nineteenth Century Studies Research Unit (Monash University), and the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTM).
Rohen Bose
Rohen Bose inherited the musical trait by birth. Born in the family of legends, his fate brought him under magnanimous pillars of music. His father Pandit Debojyoti Bose; a hallmark of Sarod himself from Senia Bangash Gharana is also a brilliant composer, lyricist and a knowledgeable tabla player. He started his training under his father at a very initial stage of his life. His musical acumen had grown to its par when he started tutelage under his elder uncle Pt. Kumar Bose, the torchbearer of Banaras Gharana and one of the finest and most creative tabla maestros of all time. Pt. Bose has trained him to become his deserved legatee. He has also taken severe training on accompaniment from his younger uncle the legend Acharya Jayanta Bose.
Rohen has been performing with his father and uncles from a very young age. He has accompanied three of them in many a concert at different cities and states of India. He has also performed solo at distinguished conferences of the country and accompanied well-established artists of Indian Classical genre. Among the greats, he has performed with Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar, Pandit Ronu Majumdar, Pandit Kushal Das, Smt. Haimanti Shukla and many more. He has presented music in some of the most renowned conferences such as SAPTAK (Ahmedabad), Uttarpara Sangeet Chakra (Kolkata), Dumdum Classical Music Festival (Dumdum), Gandharva Mahavidyalaya (Pune), Sangeet Mahabharati (Mumbai), West Bengal State Academy Conference (Kolkata), Vishnupur Utsav, Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaraho (Varanasi) and many more.
As a multi-percussionist, he has also performed with many fusion bands, orchestras and special duo concerts and has played and composed for numerous films. His experimental Band ENCORE received great recognition in the field of world music. Apart from the practical training, he has completed his graduation and masters from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata under the stream Percussion. He has composed music for several student films in Bengali and English. He has also made two internationally acclaimed documentaries on his father and elder Uncle Pt. Kumar Bose. His film ‘The Walk……. In search of the instinct’ on his guru, Pandit Kumar Bose was shown all over the world in various Film Festivals and was chosen as a text in the film studies centre in Colorado.
His paper on ‘The Language of Tabla: A linguistic discourse’, has been recognized by several national and international international universities. He has spoken about this in several seminars organised by various universities in India. He is apparently an independent scholar and a writer focusing on the relevance of Indian music in the modern world. His paper on USTAD ALLA RAKHA, “Beyond the Syllable- A hundred years of Ustad Alla Rakha” was presented exclusively at INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, NEW DELHI on the occasion of Khan Sahab’s birth centenary. He also teaches Tabla and various Indian percussions in his academy ‘BOSE FOUNDATION FOR ART AND CULTURE’.