Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh

Jnan Prakash Ghosh — also transliterated Gyan Prakash Ghosh — was born in Kolkata on 8 May 1909, the grandson of Dwarkanath Ghosh, who founded the harmonium makers Dwarkin in 1875. He graduated from Scottish Church College of the University of Calcutta, and came to music after an eye injury ended his painting and much of his sport.

He learned vocal music from Girija Shankar Chakrabarty, Mohammed Sagir Khan and Mohammed Dabir Khan, and took tabla from Masit Khan of the Farrukhabad gharana, becoming his senior disciple. He went on to study with Ustad Feroz Khan of the Punjab gharana, and is credited with bringing Punjab gharana compositions into circulation in Kolkata.

He founded the Sourav Academy of Music and was closely associated with the Sangeet Research Academy. He worked for years as a producer at All India Radio, scored Bengali films including Jadubhatta, Andhare Alo and Rajlakshmi o Srikanta (1958), and wrote music for the Oscar-nominated animated short Bead Game.

His teaching is his largest legacy. Kanai Dutta, Shyamal Bose and Shankar Ghosh were his senior tabla disciples; Nikhil Ghosh, Anindo Chatterjee and Abhijit Banerjee also studied with him, Anindo Chatterjee for some three decades. Vocalists including Ajoy Chakrabarty and Arun Bhaduri were among his students as well. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1974 and the Padma Bhushan in 1984, and died on 18 February 1997.

He spent some fifteen years at All India Radio as a producer of music, and composed across classical, light and devotional forms as well as writing lyrics — one reason his influence reached singers and instrumentalists who were not tabla players at all.

The teaching is what he is remembered for. Shankar Ghosh, interviewed by The Hindu shortly before his death in 2016, described living in his guru's Calcutta house and being called after dinner, near midnight, to take down compositions from dictation — and noted that he had learned from Firoz Khan of the Punjab tradition, one of Gyan Babu's own gurus, so that the Purab and Punjab repertoires reached him from both directions. Through Shankar Ghosh, Anindo Chatterjee, Kanai Dutta, Shyamal Bose, Nikhil Ghosh and the vocalist Ajoy Chakrabarty, that transmission runs through most of the Kolkata tabla world today. He died on 18 February 1997.

Ghosh sat at a junction of traditions rather than inside one. His tabla was rooted in Masit Khan's Farrukhabad, with its singing, melodic bayan and long gat compositions; his later training with Feroz Khan added the weightier, pakhawaj-inflected Punjab repertoire.

He was also a serious harmonium player and composer, and taught vocalists as readily as drummers — which is why his students tend to describe learning phrasing and musical shape from him, not only strokes.