In 2014 we posted already two recordings by Ustad Allauddin Khan and Radhika Mohan Maitra, in which they play the rare Dhrupad instrument Sursringar. See here. There exist only very few recordings of this instrument. In 2013 we posted a LP which had on the second side a track played on the Surshringar. See here. Now we present another recording by the amateur musician Birendra Kishore Roy Choudhury. I received this recording many many years ago on a cassette from VN, a collector of Dhrupad recordings in UK. My friend KF digitalised the recording and made a nice cover for it.
"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."
David Philipson shares on this link a very interesting small book "Indian Music and Tansen" by Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, which I made into a pdf file. See download link below.
See here a Raga Barwa by him on Rudra Veena: https://www.mediafire.com/?stpc5rgt65o4i#09nezectr2f4o
