दिनेंद्रनाथ ठाकुर

Born at Jorasanko in 1882, Dinendranath was the son of Dwipendranath and grandson of Dwijendranath Tagore, which made Rabindranath his great-uncle. He grew up inside the household where the songs were being written, and from adolescence he was the person the poet sang a new tune to first.

That habit hardened into a job. Rabindranath called him ভাণ্ডারী — the keeper, the storehouse — of his songs, and meant it literally: Dinendranath held hundreds of melodies in memory and could produce any of them on demand, which is why so much of Swarabitan is in his hand. He worked in both the akarmatrik notation used at Santiniketan and in Western staff notation, sang in a deep baritone on some of the earliest Rabindrasangeet records, and played esraj and piano.

He was the first principal of Sangit Bhavana at Visva-Bharati, took Tasher Desh on tour to Bombay in 1933, and wrote the music for the 1932 film Natir Puja. He died in 1935, six years before the poet.