School of Arts
Arka Chakraborty
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Key information
Key information
- Roles
- School of Arts PhD researcher
- Department
- School of Arts
- Qualifications
- MPhil, English Literature (Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India)
- Email address
- 684572@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- Anglophone music in Calcutta, c. 1953-1982
- Internal Supervisors
- Dr Richard Williams & Professor Rachel Harris
Biography
| Arka is a music historian specialising in postcolonial Calcutta. Drawing from a vast array of official and personal archives, and field interviews, his multisensorial and multilingual doctoral project throws light into the musical interflows between the Anglophone and vernacular spaces that have inhabited the metropolis. For the same, Arka is looking into Calcuttan Anglophone band music networks, popular music in print, musical salaciousness, and the politics of Bengali translation within the pop-rock aesthetic. After two years of digging out Calcutta’s lost sonic architectures, he is now in the early stages of writing-up. On the performative side, Arka is a singer-songwriter and a multi-instrumentalist. A television artiste, he specialises in Bangla adhunik, having trained under the tutelage of Pt. Jayanta Sarkar. Currently, he is developing his knowledge of Hindustani ragas from Budhaditya Bhattacharyya, a disciple of Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty. Arka's recent performances include prestigious venues like the Old Bailey in London and the Durham Oriental Museum. |
Research interests
Music History; Popular Music; South Asian Studies; Ethnomusicology
Contact Arka
- Social media
