Varanasi to Build Music Village in Honour of Bismillah Khan

UP CM Yogi Adityanath cleared the project on Thursday and promised land to build the museum as soon as possible.

Ustad Bismillah Khan. (Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Dilip Jain)

Varanasi is soon going to get a music village in the memory of Ustad Bismillah Khan, who belonged to Uttar Pradesh. The newly elected Yogi Adityanath government cleared the project on Thursday. The music village is the brainchild of Soma Ghosh, the adopted daughter of the legendary shehnai player.

The music village is to be named ‘Bismillah Khan Sangeet Gram’ will have a number of features including a museum and a music centre and a training-cum-research centre along with some special features of a musical ‘gharana’.

Yogi Adityanath promised to provide suitable land to speed up the process.

Soma Ghosh was ecstatic after the Chief Minister’s nod and said that it was the biggest day of her life to see her father’s dream translate into reality, according to a Hindustan Times report.

Hindustan Times quoted Ghosh as saying:

The idea to set up a musical hamlet came in 2005. It was a long cherished desire of my late father to preserve India’s ancient musical heritage, including traditional musical instruments.

Like her father, Ghosh is a renowned classical singer with a vast variety of work to her credit. She also has an enviable collection of some of the rarest musical instruments like surbahar, vichitra veena, rudra veena, saraswati veena, shehnai, tar shehnai, table tarang, sundaree, dukkar, tutari, israj, according to the report.

The collection is a result of hard work. Ghosh collected most of it and even brought some from museums, personal collectors, art connoisseurs and musical gharanas.

However, this didn’t come easily to Ghosh who initially faced a lot of criticism for her idea. But the idea later got appreciated by late President APJ Abdul Kalam and PM Narendra Modi, among others.

After having collected the rare instruments, Soma faced the task of putting them to some good use.

I was clear that their display at a museum alone won’t help, I wanted an academy or a hamlet where these can be studied, researched and practised.

Padma Shri Soma Ghosh to Hindustan Times

Her quest for finding land for the museum started in 2015, but didn’t reap results since the government was busy with assembly polls.

She tried again, this Tuesday by leaving a message to the Chief Minister’s office. Incidentally, her request was heard this time only after a couple of days. “I really appreciate Yogi ji’s gesture who also gave clearance to the hamlet,” she said, according to Hindustan Times.

(With inputs from Hindustan Times)