The Gandharva Loka Blog

We are very happy to announce that the international family of Gandharva Loka stores has recently committed to sponsoring a group of children in Bangladesh through the Surer Dhara School of Music.

Shurer Dhara is a school of music modelled after the thoughts and successful experiment in education of the Indian seer-poet and Nobel laureate (Nobel Prize for Literature,1913) Rabindranath Tagore (pictured top right). Tagore’s philosophy places as much importance on aesthetics as it does on intellect.

The community music school was founded in 1993 in Lalmatia, Dhaka, by Rezwana Choudhury Bannya (pictured bottom right), an accomplished exponent of Rabindra Sangeet (music of Tagore), who is a distinguished alumna of Visva-Bharati, the renowned Indian university in Santiniketan founded by Tagore.

Rezwana Choudhury Bannya is also a senior member of the Faculty of Music and Drama, University of Dhaka. Bannya was inspired by her guru, Sreemati Kanika Bandopadhaye, a direct disciple of Tagore, to open a school in Bangladesh to continue the tradition of Santiniketan.

The programme is called Music for Development and it promotes music education as an integral part of children growing up to learn social accountability and asset development skills. When I was in Bangladesh in 2009 as part of a contingent of musicians and singers from Christchurch who performed at the Songs of the Soul concert in Dhaka, I was so inspired to see what a difference the Music for Development programme was making for the children that we met and performed with. The following is from the Music for Development page:

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