Indian Music and Mian Tansen
by Pandit Birendra Kishore Roy Choadhury
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'Indian Music and Mian Tansen' is an informative small book about Hindustani music, written by Pt. Birendra Kishore Roy Choadhury, self published in the late 1950's. Pt. B. K. R. C. explains much about the traditional lineages in North Indian music and I hope all those interested in classical music will find it as interesting as I have. I have put the entire text online as this book is extremely rare and hard to find. My own copy was a xerox of the original, given to me by my first teacher Prof. Amiya Dasgupta. - david philipson
Pt. Birendra Kishore Roy
Choadhury (~1901-1972?) was from a family of wealthy zamindars
(landowners) in East Bengal, what is now Bangladesh. The estate
was called Gouripur, in the Mymensingh district. His father, Brajendra
Kishore Roy Choudhury, was renowned as a patron of musicians.
His son not only continued this tradition of patronage, but became
the disciple of many of the great musicians of his time, including
Mohammed Wazir Khan, the great Binkar of Rampur and the last descendant
of Tansen's daughter Saraswati; Mohammed Ali Khan who was the
second son of Basat Khan; Imdad Khan, founder of the lineage of
sitar represented today by his grandson Vilayat Khan; Allauddin
Khan, father of Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna
Devi and guru to Ravi Shankar, and Hafiz Ali Khan, the great sarod
maestro. Birendra Kishore Roy Choudhury was a master of the Dhrupad
style, especially in instrumental music, and played the Bin, the
Sursringar and the Seni Rabab.
My labour will bear proper fruits if the learned lovers of Indian music give little time to go through its contents.
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