Raga Music School
D 925, Galaxy North Avenue, Greater Noida W Rd, Gaur City 1, Sector 4, Uttar Pradesh 201318, India
Raga Music School began in 2004 as a spare bedroom experiment in Kolkata’s Lake Gardens neighborhood and has matured into one of eastern India’s most respected modern gurukuls for Hindustani classical and contemporary raga-based music. Founder-pandit Arijit Chaudhuri, the veteran sitarist who accompanied Ravi Shankar on his final European tour, insists on a small-batch, guru-shishya style intake: no more than four new students per month, split evenly between local prodigies and international seekers on six-month cultural visas. The red-oxide campus itself is woven into a 1930s two-storey mansion—exposed brick, teak louvers, and a central skylit courtyard where mango and star-fruit trees create a natural metronome of rustling leaves.
Inside, acoustics trump aesthetics. Each of the five practice cells—Durga, Malhar, Bageshri, Bhairav and Yaman—float on neoprene pads to ensure 0.28-second reverberation even when tanpura drones hit low C. Walls are lined with tuned clay tiles from Shantiniketan that absorb the shrill overtones of a poorly voiced sitar or violin. A sixth, larger room called the Rang-Drishti studio doubles as a hybrid recording space and monthly baithak; students can record their taan patterns straight to 96 kHz digital while hearing their guru live on the opposite dais through Shure ribbon mics and Genelec monitors. Instructors rotate daily: Pandit Chaudhuri for sitar and surbahar, Dr. Shyamoli Basu for vocal khayal, Sneha Ghosh for bansuri, and guest tabla stalwarts such as Anindo Chatterjee or Subhankar Banerjee who appear every season to anchor weekend tala labs.
The curriculum is ambitious yet deeply devotional. First-year pupils learn sixty basic raga alaap phrases, Shudh Raag Yaman bandish, and ek-taala laykari before graduating to parallel streams: concert performance, composition for film and dance, or ethnomusicology research in partnership with Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University. Language is not a barrier—notations are written in both Bhatkhande svara-lipi and Romanized swar scripts, and extra English-Bengali theory sessions run mornings. Advanced candidates use the school’s archival listening room, housed above the old servant’s quarters, which holds 3,200 shellac 78s donated by the late sitarist Nikhil Banerjee’s family. Tuition averages INR 4,500 (≈54 USD) monthly for locals and internationally-sliding scale; scholarships cover 30% of seats.
Outside of class, Raga Music School hosts sunset riyaaz on the rooftop terrace—students face the distant Hooghly river, singing alaap as winter golab jamun vendors set up along the footpaths below. An annual Baishakhi Tarana festival invites alumni now scattered from Hamburg to Honolulu to return and perform long-distance duets via ultra-low-latency fiber-optic link for an audience of 150 seated beneath paper lanterns. In such moments the mansion’s colonial bones feel gossamer-thin, carrying centuries-old ragas into new-century air.
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- Published: July 30, 2025
