Anindo Chatterjee – The leading tabla player belonging to Farukhabad gharana

Anindo Chatterjee is an Indian musician and tabla player who practises in Farukhabad gharana. He belongs to a musical family, with many artists closely linked to it. His uncle Debiprasad Chatterjee and younger sister Keka Mukherjee are well known sitarists. In fact apart from a solo career, Anindo has also closely worked with many Sitar players of present generation. He is a recipient of Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for the year 2002 and many other honours. He has contributed as an artist as well as recorded many albums too. In the 1980s and 1990s, he recorded a few musical albums with Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ram Narayan, Stephen James, Pandit Ramgopal Misra etc.

Anindo Chatterjee was born in Kolkata into a traditional musical family in 1954. Though most of the artists are associated with Sitar, he chose tabla as his medium. He started learning music at the age of 5 and studied under Ustad Afaq Hussain Khan of the Lucknow Gharana. Later he took formal lessons from Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh. He was a recipient of the prestigious President’s Award in 1970, and went on to establish as a leading tabla artist of new generation towards the end of 20^th century.

Anindo Chatterjee – Some interesting facts

1. Many of his family members are associated with the musical instrument Sitar, his uncle Debiprasad Chatterjee and sister Keka Mukherjee being the leading artists. Keka performs at All India Radio.

2. His uncle Pandit Biswanath Chatterjee inspired him a lot to learn tabla right from the early childhood, and that’s how he started learning tabla.

3. As an accompany he has performed aside some of the doyens of Hindustani music like Ravi Shankar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shahid Parvez, Nikhil Banerjee, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Ali Akbar Khan, Gangubai Hangal etc.

4. He serves as the director of the Farrukhabad Gharana of Tabla, founded by Haji Vilayat Khan and also owns numerous disciples.

5. In 1990 he became the first tabla player to perform in the House of Commons.

6. In 2010 he performed at Rashtrapati Bhawan when then US president Barrack Obama visited India.