Bengali Culture - Music

Music

The Baul tradition is a unique heritage of Bengali folk music, which has also been influenced by regional music traditions. Other folk music forms include Gombhira, Bhatiali and Bhawaiya. Folk music in Bengal is often accompanied by the ektara, a one-stringed instrument. Other instruments include the dotara, dhol, flute, and tabla. The region also has an active heritage in North Indian classical music. Gurusaday Dutt did a lot for the revival of folk art and folk dances of Bengal in the early twentieth century.

Rabindra Sangeet, songs by Rabindranath Tagore, use Indian classical music and traditional folk-music as sources. In Bengali cultural life they have a strong influence. Nazrul Geeti, songs by Kazi Nazrul Islam, are also of great significance in Bengali culture.

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Famous quotes containing the word music:

    Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
    Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
    List to the heavy part the music bears,
    “Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
    Droop herbs and flowers;
    Fall grief in showers;
    “Our beauties are not ours”:
    Oh, I could still,
    Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
    Drop, drop, drop, drop,
    Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    This music crept by me upon the waters,
    Allaying both their fury and my passion
    With its sweet air; thence have I followed it,
    Or it hath drawn me rather.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)