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Sri Somnath Roy is truly a name to reckon with in the select band of versatile percussionists. Apart from performing on a variety of Indian, eastern and western percussion instruments which has naturally come to him at very young age, Somnath in one among the few north Indian musicians who have studied the South Indian style of rhythm structures, calculations and most importantly the art of playing the earthen clay pot GHATAM which is an exclusive percussion instrument of the South Indian classical music. With his widened knowledge in multi-percussions and rich orchestrating experience Somnath is giving the art of percussion a new aesthetic touch.
Born in a pious music loving family in 1971 at Howrah, West Bengal, Somnath has shown remarkable inclination towards various musical instruments even from his very childhood. Keenly observing classical and neo classical music and trying a variety of instruments whenever an opportunity strikes. Somnath kept his passion intact for many years. He started learning the Hindustani Flute from Sri Nepal Sarkar and went on to learn western percussion and art of playing western percussion from Sri Amal Roy and dholak Sri Bablu Biswas respectively. |
His unbridled urge to explore beyond frontier of Hindustani laya system took him to Pandit S. Shekar, the legendary mridangam maestro of Kolkata who comes from the acclaimed Palghat Mani Iyer School of mridangam playing. After initiating Somnath into fundamentals and intricacies of laya, the master art Sri Sekhar learnt from his guru “vidwan Shri L.V.Baidyanathan”, of South Indian percussion for a couple of years, Shri Shekar advised Somnath to learn unique art of ghatam playing from the ‘numero uno’ in Ghatam today , Shri V Suresh who lives in Chennai. Shri Suresh trained Somnath under Gurukula system (where the student lives with the guru’s family and learns the art for some years) for more than two years, guiding him in the authentic, fingering techniques of ghatam which has been laid down by great masters like Palani Krishna Iyer, Sundaram Iyer and Umayalpuram Kothandarama iyer , and passed onto him by his great gurus Shri T R Harihara Sharma, Shri T H Vinayakaram and Shri Umayalapuram Narayanaswamy iyer. Besides Suresh also taught him the intricate laya patterns, structures, creative and aesthetic approach and humility which he imbibed from his guru for more than two decades Sangeetha Laya Samrat Shri T V Gopalakrishnan.
Somnath had his maiden performance as a Ghatam player in a Carnatic classical concert accompanying a veteran Mridangam Player Shri T K Moorthy and proved his mettle to the critical audience of Chennai in 1998.
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