The bi-musical subject: Dwarkanath Tagore and European music in early-nineteenth century Calcutta

What was the Indians' early encounter with European music like? How did they access the music of the coloniser and get socialised in it? Following Dwarkanath Tagore's engagements with European music in early-19th century Calcutta, this essay maps the sites and spaces of western music in the city through which the contemporary Bengali elite first got exposed to the music that their colonial masters had brought into the subcontinent. In conceptually framing this process, it borrows the concept of 'bi-musicality' from ethnomusicology and repurposes it as a historical analytic to understand the new and emergent form of musicality that was organic to the colonial encounter in India and constitutively modern.