Bubu Eklund


Bubu Eklund is an Indian-born Swedish singer and exponent of Rabindra Sangeet. She is based in Lund and leads the Lund International Tagore Choir with her husband Lars Eklund, which is involved in popularising Rabindra Sangeet and the ideologies of Rabindranath Tagore in Sweden. She is the daughter of Indian painter and commercial artist Annada Munsi. Eklund is known for her series of concerts titled A Swedish View of Rabindranath Tagore, along with Per Olov Henricson.

Biography

Eklund was born in a Bengali family, the daughter of painter and commercial artist Annada Munsi. She attended the Rabitirtha Institute in Kolkata, India, as a student of Rabindra Sangeet exponents Suchitra Mitra and Kanika Bandopadhyay.
According to Riyanka Roy of The Indian Express,
“Bubu was already an accomplished exponent of Rabindrasangeet, having trained under two of the most revered figures in Tagore’s musical tradition, Suchitra Mitra and Kanika Bandyopadhyay, whose guidance shaped both her artistic grounding and interpretive depth."

Eklund started the International Tagore Choir in Lund with her husband Lars Eklund in 2012, where Swedish people are trained to sing Rabindra Sangeet. She lives in Lund, Sweden from 1983 with her husband Lars Eklund.
According to a feature published in The Telegraph (India) in 2015, Hindol Sengupta and Andreas Mattsson,
“It was in 2012 that the couple inaugurated their "other dream project" - a Swedish Rabindrasangeet choir. It now has 15 members, comprising an Indian and a Bangladeshi, but the rest all Swedes. The choir has performed at many concerts in Lund and also Uppsala, where a Tagore statue was unveiled at the university in 2013."

Performances

In 2013 the choir toured West Bengal and Odisha, performing at Calcutta’s Star Theatre alongside Mamata Shankar’s troupe and at Santiniketan’s Sangit Bhavana for students and faculty.