Dex­ter Raghu­nanan is ac­claimed as an il­lus­tri­ous tabla mae­stro of Trinidad, as well as be­ing one of the most dis­tin­guished In­di­an Clas­si­cal artistes to orig­i­nate from Trinidad. His work to­wards the pro­mo­tion of Trinida­di­an cul­ture is tru­ly ad­mirable. In cel­e­bra­tion of Raghu­nanan's achieve­ments over the past 25 years, his stu­dents and friends have de­cid­ed to stage a pro­duc­tion en­ti­tled Junoon... the Dex­pe­ri­ence. It would be held on Sep­tem­ber 17, at 5 pm, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. The con­cert fea­tures promi­nent artistes, in­clud­ing The Trinidad Tabla En­sem­ble, Shiv­an­nand and Naren­dra Ma­haraj, Rana and Su­san Mo­hip, Neval Chate­lal, The Minocha Broth­ers, Nir­mala Ses­narayan, Shar­da Patasar and many oth­er promi­nent lo­cal artistes. The event promis­es to be a dy­nam­ic dis­play of lo­cal cul­ture with pre­sen­ta­tions of clas­si­cal, se­mi-clas­si­cal and Bol­ly­wood mu­sic.

Raghu­nanan's mu­si­cal jour­ney be­gan un­der the tute­lage of Shri Tens­ing Ram­lakhan but it was not long be­fore he be­came a sought af­ter ac­com­pa­nist and per­former, both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. He con­tin­ued his tabla train­ing and dur­ing his ear­ly years was for­tu­nate enough to al­so learn from tabla play­ers such Shri Nir­mal Man­dal, Shri Sandeep Das and Pt Pooran Ma­haraj, son of the late Pt Kishen Ma­haraj. Raghu­nanan es­tab­lished his own tabla school, which start­ed off with just four stu­dents in a tem­ple in South Trinidad but soon ex­pand­ed to a school of more than 200. Raghu­nanan's love of tabla took him to the US and Cana­da, where he ac­com­pa­nied many artistes. It was in Toron­to that he met Shri Ritesh Das in 1999, and re­ceived rig­or­ous train­ing un­der the guid­ance of Riteshji and Mae­stro of Luc­know gha­rana, Pt Swa­pan Chaud­huri.

In 2005, Raghu­nanan moved to Hous­ton Texas where he be­gan teach­ing tabla and per­form­ing ex­ten­sive­ly in the US with Clas­si­cal mu­si­cians, Ghaz­al singers, dancers and fu­sion artistes. Most re­cent­ly, he has al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from the lead­ing ex­po­nent of Farukhabad gha­rana, Pt Anin­do Chat­ter­jee.

Dex­ter Raghu­nanan's per­for­mances with world fa­mous artistes in­clude:

• Pt Jas­raj

• Pt Ramesh Mis­ra

• Bha­jan Sam­rat- Sri Anup Jalota

• Pt Ajay Jha

• Sri Sud­hir Narain

• Us­tad Ghu­lam Ab­bas

• Sri In­dra­jit Baner­jee

• Sunil Mungee