Tagore in Paris, sung in Dhaka

Rabindranath Tagore's connection with France was never the story of a single visit. Over four decades it shifted and deepened, carrying him from a young traveller wandering Paris to a Nobel laureate courted by its writers and artists, and finally to a painter hanging his own work on a French gallery wall.

A slice of that evolving relationship came alive through music, poetry and conversation at Tagore's French Encounter - An Evening of Tagore Songs & Poems, held at Alliance Française de Dhaka on Friday, 18 September. Staged in the Auditorium Nouvelle Vague, the programme was curated and presented by Rabindra Sangeet exponent Sanchita Rakhi, with Dhruba Jyoti as co-researcher and moderator, alongside several other artists and performers.

The auditorium was packed. Rather than deliver the history as a straightforward talk, the organisers wove it together through Rabindra Sangeet, recitation, contextual narration and visuals projected on screen, moving between music, poetry and storytelling as the evening unfolded.

For Rakhi, the pull of the subject lay in its sheer depth. "It was not simply a relationship between a poet and a country," she said. "It was an exchange of ideas, music, literature, art and human values." As a Tagore song artist, she has long been fascinated by how the poet absorbed the spirit of the places he encountered and turned those experiences into something of his own.

That journey, according to Dhruba, can broadly be divided into three phases. The first came when Tagore was around 29, experiencing France with what Dhruba called "an eye of discovery" - Paris and its modern architecture, its technological confidence, the Eiffel Tower all leaving their mark on the young traveller. 

The second followed his 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, when his engagement turned towards France's intellectual and artistic circles and he met writers, critics, political figures and thinkers. The third arrived in his late 60s, when the poet and philosopher had grown into a serious painter; his first Paris exhibition, at Galerie Pigalle, became a defining part of that late artistic life.

"We tried to make a kind of gist and express it to our audience through music, recitation, with some description," Dhruba said of the approach.

The musical heart of the evening belonged to Rakhi, accompanied by Ashikul Abir on esraj, Gautam Kumar Sarkar on tabla, Koushik Ahmed Antar on keyboard and Md Nashir Uddin on guitar. François Chambraud, Director of Alliance Française de Dhaka, recited poems from the French version of Gitanjali. The songs moved through different moods, warm and soulful, while the French recitations lent the evening a distinctly cross-cultural feel.

That crossing of borders is, for Rakhi, the essence of the music itself. Rabindra Sangeet is deeply rooted in Bengali culture, she said, yet its emotions are never confined by language or geography. "The melody carries the fragrance of Bengal, but the emotion can travel far beyond Bengal." Even a listener who does not follow every word, she added, can feel a song's tenderness, its melancholy, its celebration of nature or its sense of inner freedom.

Knowing more about Tagore's international encounters, she believes, can change how audiences listen. When we understand that he was constantly engaging with different cultures, literature, music and ideas, "we begin to hear his music not only as expressions of Bengal, but also as part of a much wider conversation with the world." 

Crucially, he never simply imitated what he found. "He absorbed, transformed and made those influences his own," she said - a line that could as easily describe the man in Paris as the music he left behind.

The question of how to keep that music alive for younger listeners drew a clear-eyed answer. Rakhi wants the songs brought into the spaces where young audiences naturally gather — concerts, digital platforms, visual storytelling, collaborations with young musicians, even carefully made contemporary arrangements. The one condition is fidelity: "the melody, lyrics, notation, emotional character and artistic integrity of the original composition must remain respected."

For Chambraud, the evening offered a chance to look at the "wealth of this cultural dialogue" between Tagore and France. It was a fitting frame. What the audience at Nouvelle Vague heard was less a lecture on history than a demonstration of Tagore's own creative philosophy - an openness to the world, and the confidence to make it his own