Santidev Ghosh

Santidev Ghose (also Santidev Ghosh, Shantidev Ghosh and Santideb Ghosh) (Santiniketan, May 7, 1910 – December 1, 1999) was an Indian author, singer, actor, dancer and maestro of Rabindra Sangeet.

As a teenager, Ghosh was selected by the first non-European Nobel Prize-winning Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore to be a teacher in Santiniketan and sent across India and even to Sri Lanka, Java and Bali to further his musical education for that purpose. Tagore also encouraged Ghosh to act and dance in the poet-laureate's dance dramas, for which Ghosh displayed an uncommon talent for singing, as well as dancing and acting. Some of the poems of Tagore which he converted to new forms of poem-songs, to be sung continuous without repeating the first two lines after each stanza, such as "Krishnakali", were first presented to the public by Ghosh. During his long and productive life in Santiniketan, Ghosh taught numerous students, many of whom were to later become famed notable singers themselves, such as Suchitra Mitra and Pramita Mallick. He also garnered fame as author and an authority, on Asian music and especially that of Rabindranath Tagore. During his life, he received notable awards and recognition from the music academies as well as Universities and the Government of India, and was declared a National Scholar by the Government of India. In 2002, India released a postage stamp on Ghosh to commemorate his contribution to music. The Minister for Communication and Information Technology noted that Ghosh "belonged to that class of musicians who through the ages carried forward music's unique creativity".