Santiniketan: Birth of Another Cultural Space – Free e-book by Pulak Dutta

“Of all living creatures in the world, man has his vital and mental energy vastly in excess of his need, which urges him to work in various lines of creation for its own sake […] Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space.” – Rabindranath Tagore in The Religion of an Artist 1

KG Subramanyam with Pulak Dutta – Santiniketan 2009

Source: Pulak Dutta. Santiniketan: Birth of Another Cultural Space. Santiniketan 2015. Contact: pulaksantiniketan@gmail.com | Download his free e-book here | Backup copy (PDF, 5 MB) >>

More on and by Rabindranath Tagore >>

Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >>
The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).

“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.”2

  1. Quoted by Pulak Dutta (p. 97) from Sisir Kumar Das (ed.). The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Vol 3. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi 2006 (pp. 687-8) []
  2. Sunil Khilnani quoted in a review by William Dalrymple in The Guardian, 14 March 2016[]

Video tutorial | Make an 8-page shirt pocket-sized booklet

A brief tutorial how it’s done within minutes
To share your ideas with others, make some copies and pass them forward.
Use the booklet as convenient handout during workshops or school excursions.
Presentation and music © Ludwig Pesch Creative Commons

What do we need?

  • plain paper (letter size or any other)
  • scissors
  • a pen or pencil
  • colours for the mini-poster or charts
  • a nice story to share/a lesson to teach

“Flow” in music for integrated education and lifetime learning

“Just as flow is a prerequisite for mastery in a craft, profession, or art, so too with learning. Students who get into flow as they study do better, quite apart from their potential as measured by achievement tests.” – Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence

Learn more in the context of a free, raga-based exercise that can be taught and practiced anywhere, any time with a modicum of experience and perseverance >>

True happiness according to Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore sketched by Dutch artist Martin Monnickendam during a lecture tour in September 1920 © Stadsarchief Amsterdam

“True happiness is not at all expensive. It depends upon that natural spring of beauty and of life, harmony of relationship. Ambition pursues its own path of self-seeking by breaking this bond of harmony, digging gaps, creating dissension. Selfish ambition feels no hesitation in trampling under foot the whole harvest field, which is for all, in order to snatch away in haste that portion which it craves. Being wasteful it remains disruptive of social life and the greatest enemy of civilization.” | Read the full lecture >>

Source: Rabindranath Tagore in “Robbery of the soil” (Calcutta University, 1922), posted by Tony Mitra on a blog “Exploring citizens duty on food security, environmental sustainability, covid and freedom issues” (27 September 2015)
https://www.tonu.org/tag/robbery-of-the-soil/
Date visited: 12 January 2021

Worldcat lists compiled by Ludwig Pesch

Carnatic (South Indian classical) music 

Rabindranath Tagore: works by and about the influential writer, humanist and social reformer

Indian performing arts

History 

Publications, book chapters and articles by Ludwig Pesch

How will we experience music in 2050? To play music together and connect!

Ideally in a very profound way – the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before music became a commodity:

So it’s a rainy day in 2050 and you and your friends decide you’d like to see a concert. […] Emmy Parker, a cultural futurist and former brand manager for synthesizer maker Moog Music, said that the future could also allow us to experience music and sound in a very profound way, the way families have shared music for thousands of years, and long before “music” became a commodity.

“How can we expand that simple idea, which has been on planet Earth probably for 150,000 years, that we play music together to, number one, connect with each other?” said Parker.

19:40 we play music together, to connect to our higher self or God or universe; to our ancestors, to bring us back to another time and place […] very similar to a time traveler.

We use to heal our minds, our hearts and spirit, and our body, and connect to each other, to our families.

Listen to Spark’s Next Big Thing series, which explores how technology in various guises might affect humanity in the far future >>