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In the late eighteenth century, Calcutta witnessed an efflorescence of musical experimentations. In the white town, memsahibs took keen interest in the music they heard at the nautch parties and transcribed the songs in western staff notation. They played these ghazals and tuppahs on their harpsichords. The new music acquired a new name – Hindustani Air. In the black town, Nidhu Babu composed tuppahs in Bengali and the kobis locked themselves in battles of musical wit. Keertans and Shyama Sangeet drifted from the temples and rented the evening air. There was music for every ear and every soul. Musicians and music scholars in Kolkata and London bring alive the lost era with their soulful renditions and scholarly comments.
Speakers:
Dr Katherine Butler Schofield is Senior Lecturer in South Asian Music and History at the Department of Music, King's College London. She is a historian of music and listening in Mughal India and the pre-colonial Indian Ocean. She trained as a viola player before embarking on her PhD at SOAS, University of London, and came to King’s after a research fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a lectureship at Leeds. Her special interests include ethnomusicology, global music history, Islam, Empire and Colonialism, Mughal India.
Jane Chapman is the Professor of Harpsichord at the Royal College of Music. Her chosen instrument is the harpsichord. Equally passionate about baroque and contemporary music, Jane has collaborated with ground-breaking composers, artists and dancers working with musicians from the worlds of Indian music, jazz, and the avant-garde. Her CD of the ‘Oriental Miscellany’ was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik. She has premiered over 200 solo, chamber, and electroacoustic pieces, and pioneered the first disc of electroacoustic works for harpsichord by British composers - WIRED.
Souvid Datta is a photojournalist and cinematographer. He has undertaken projects across the world for a variety of clients, including National Geographic, TIME, The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, etc. He has won numerous awards, including the PDN 30 in 2017, the Pulitzer Centre Grant in 2016, the Getty Grant for Editorial Photography in 2015, PDN Annual in 2015, and Magnum Photos 30 Under 30 Award in 2015. He was also a runner up in Sky Arts' reality TV show Master of Photography and directed a documentary on the folk music of India (Tuning 2 You: Lost Musicians of India), which was hosted by his brother Soumik Datta, an accomplished sarod player, and in 2017 was broadcast on Channel 4 and Sony BBC Earth
Dr. Sangeeta Datta is a filmmaker, writer, reviewer, and singer. Her recent documentary film Bird of Dusk has earned her popular and critical acclaim. On May 30, the film had its digital premiere on the OTT platform Hoichoi.