I performed for an hour, could have gone on and on: Tabla maestro Ishaan Ghosh
The 24-year-old musician performed at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya to play at Shree Ram Rag Seva music festival.
Talent isn’t based on age and this holds true for 24-year-old tabla player Ishaan Ghosh, who performed at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. In the city for the first time to play at Shree Ram Rag Seva, a 45-day-long devotional music festival dedicated to Ram, he says it felt surreal.
“The stage was set at the altar in front of the Ram Lalla idol. It gave me goosebumps and I was soaked in seva bhaav. While I’ve performed across the globe, doing it live, for the devotees there, felt out of the world. I performed for an hour and could have gone on and on,” says the musician.
Doing this for the last 17 years, Ishaan was 7 when he first took the stage with his father, Pandit Nayan Ghosh. However, he shares it “doesn’t feel that it has been this long”. He adds, “I have a lineage to live up to, and as my father and uncles say, ‘The deeper your roots, the stronger are your wings to fly’. So, it’s on me how much I spread my wings.”
With 15 albums to his credit, Ishaan is working on putting out more music. His latest single, Euphoria, is a traditional tabla and techno music mix.
Talking about his Bollywood aspirations, he says, “Cinema and classical music go hand-in-hand. It’s not something you plan or wait for; it just happens. I played in the background score for Gadar 2 (2023), and recently, [I played a] long piece for director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi. It’s all about music for me, whether I’m playing at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, or working on a Bollywood project.”