Tapan Tapadar is a Kolkata-based folk singer, a voice shaped as much by the streets of Bengal as by the guidance of the folk tradition’s finest custodians.

He was born in 1957 in the family home at Ramlal Bazar, Kolkata — a city his family had made their own only a decade earlier, having crossed over from Bikrampur, near Dhaka, in the uncertain months just before Partition.

As a boy, he was much like any other child growing up in Bengal at the time: full of everyday mischief, and devoted above all to football, a passion that stayed with him through his life. He studied at Kasba Chittaranjan School, then joined Ashutosh College — though his studies paused for a time following his father’s passing — before he went on to complete his graduation at Bangabasi College. He coined his interest in music from his family culture.

Music entered his life in earnest in 1975, through the mass songs of the era. He sang with a local group called Samaswar, lending his voice to a tradition built on collective spirit and shared struggle.

The real turning point came in 1987, with his meeting with Kali Dasgupta — the celebrated folk artist and researcher whose lifelong work collecting and interpreting the folk songs of Bengal and the Northeast made him one of the tradition’s most important custodians. Tapan became his earnest disciple, and under him began to learn folk music not merely as performance, but as an inherited, inner knowledge passed down through generations.

Since then, he has carried that knowledge to many stages — performing on Akashvani and Doordarshan, touring with Kali Dasgupta’s troupe to Mumbai and Delhi, and appearing across countless platforms and festivals in Bengal. Even today, decades on, Tapan Tapadar continues to perform — a folk singer still rooted, still singing. Tapan Tapadar is always vocal to keep the folk tradition free from urban colonalization.