Sangeet Sattra Celebrates Golden Jubilee

Sangeet Sattra Celebrates Golden Jubilee

- Manjari Sinha

Sangeet Sattra, a pioneering institution of Sattriya culture in Assam, celebrated its golden jubilee together with the ninth Rasheswar Saikia Sattriya Award ceremony and the annual festival of dance and music, at Rabindra Bhawan, Guwahati. Sattriya dancer Bayanacharya Ghanakanta Borbayan and Odissi dancer Gajendra Panda received this year’s award from Banwarilal Purohit, Governor of Assam. Well known artists from the state and outside performed in the three-day festival. A commemorative volume Korapaat (gateway) embellished with rare photographs soaked in the reminiscences of legendary ‘bhakat’ (member of the monastic order in a satra) Adhyapak Rasheswar Saikia was released.

The award “Rasheswar Saikia Barbayan Sattriya Bota” was introduced by Sangeet Sattra, Guwahati, and a group of art lovers of Assam in honour of Rasheswar Saikia (founder-principal of the institution in 2009) for his exemplary contribution and untiring effort in teaching, nurturing, propagating and establishing the traditional style and structural purity of the music, dance and bhaona (drama) of the Vaishnavite satras of Assam.

Trained exhaustively by stalwarts in gayan (singing), bayan (playing the khol) and dance, Saikia mastered all the traditional learning in the satra from the age of seven, when his parents offered him as a bhakat to the satra. He wanted to propagate Sattriya culture and establish it as a performing art, so he started teaching outside the satra but was severely criticised for teaching women.