Tradition · dhrupad gharana
Bishnupur gharana
The Bishnupur gharana of dhrupad grew at the court of the Mallas of Bishnupur in West Bengal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is the only major Hindustani vocal gharana based in Bengal. Its founder Bahadur Khan is said to have been a descendant of Tansen, and its style has kept the older Betiya dhrupad idiom alive alongside the Malla court's own terracotta-temple culture in a way no other Bengali music tradition has.
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- Arts & performance
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- PatronageBishnupur
Bishnupur was the Malla capital in West Bengal, where a rare inland Hindustani vocal tradition took root under royal patronage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Malla terracotta temples and the dhrupad gharana are the two things Bishnupur is known for — both the result of the same patronage — and the town is the only place in Bengal where dhrupad is a locally rooted, not an imported, tradition.
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Sources
Wikipedia, "Bishnupur gharana"; Sangeet Natak Akademi and IGNCA oral-history collections; Bonnie Wade and the standard gharana literature.
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