Music of Bengal
The Middle Ages saw a mixture of Hindu and Islamic trends when the musical tradition was formalized under the patronage of Sultan and Nawabs and the powerful landlords baro bhuiyans.
Apart from the religiosity, the influence of the Sufis became attached to popular Bengali culture by the confluence of the murshidi, marfati and baul songs, and gazir gan.
[1] Kotalipara in the Faridpur Zilla of East Bengal (presently Bangladesh) owes its origin to “Chandraburmankot” erected there, circa 315 AD, the remains of which are still extant.
He had a journey similar to Ustad Allauddin Khan’s, coming to Kolkata penniless from Kotalipara ( currently in Bangladesh ) to learn classical music.
The Bauls (meaning "divinely inspired insanity") are a group of mystic minstrels (Muslim Sufis and Hindu Baishnos) from the Bengal region, who sang primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Bauls traveled and sang in search of the internal ideal, Moner Manush (Man of the Heart or the inner being), and described "superfluous" differences between religions.
Lalon does not fit the "mystical" or "spiritual" type who denies all worldly affairs in search of the soul: he embodies the socially transformative role of sub-continental bhakti and sufism.
This songs are composed by legendary Bengali mystic poet, songwriter, and philosopher , Hason Raja, from Sylhet, Bangladesh.
The leading proponent of Bengali music is Rabindranath Tagore (known in Bengali as Robi Thakur and Gurudeb, the latter meaning "Respected Teacher" (in the Bengal of that time, the suffix 'deb' was an honorific, ascribed to people who enjoyed immense respect, but this title was primarily used by his students at Santiniketan, though many others did use the address/[2]) Tagore was a prolific composer with around 2,230 songs to his credit.
Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions.
[5] Yet about nine-tenths of his work was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western, Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own ancestral culture.
Tagore saw the partition as a cunning plan to stop the independence movement, and he aimed to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism.
Jana Gana Mana was written in shadhu-bhasha, a Sanskritised form of Bengali, and is the first of five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata that Tagore composed.
Some of the notable exponents of Rabindrasangeet are Shantideb Ghosh, Debabrata Biswas, Pankaj Kumar Mullick, Kalim Sharafi, Kanika Bandyopadhyay, Rajeshwari Datta, Malati Ghoshal, Nilima Sen, Suchitra Mitra, Aditi Mohsin, Rezwana Choudhury Bannya, Subinoy Roy, Chinmoy Chatterjee, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Dwijen Mukhopadhyay, Sagar Sen, Santosh Thakur, Purabi Mukhopadhyay, Kabir Suman, Banani Ghosh, Mita Haque, Indrani Sen, Srikanto Acharya, Shreya Guhathakurta Sahana Bajpaie Mohan Singh Furthermore, it is believed that on December 27, 1931, Dhurjatiprasad Mukhopadhyay wrote an essay titled “রবীন্দ্রনাথের সংগীত” (Rabindranath’s Music) for Tagore’s 70th birth anniversary, in which the term “Rabindrasangeet” was used for the first time.
In January 1935, Kanak Das’s recording P11792, featuring “মনে রবে কিনা রবে আমারে” (“Whether or not I remain in your recollection”) and “কাছে যবে ছিল পাশে হল না যাওয়া” (“When you were near, I couldn’t reach you”) first used “Rabindrasangeet” on the label.
Shyama Sangeet appeals to the common man because it is a musical representation of the relationship of eternal and sublime love and care between the mother and her child.
Sarkar composed a total of 5,018 songs including the lyrics and the tune, in a period of eight years from 1982 until his death in 1990, making using of eight different languages: Bengali, Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Urdu, Magahi, Maithili and Angika.
Rajanikanta Sen (1865–1910) was a renowned Bengali poet, composer, and lyricist known for his devotional songs, patriotic anthems, and emotional melodies.
Tapan Chowdhury, Azam Khan, Abdul Jabbar, Ferdousi Rahman, Khurshid Alam, Bashir Ahmad, Syed Abdul Hadi, Shahnaz Rahmatullah, Kalim Sharafi, Abida Sultana, Kanak Chapa, Shakila Zafar, Samina Chowdhury, Kumar Biswajit, Arnob, Farida Parveen, Andrew Kishore, James, Ayub Bachchu, Mila, Anusheh Anadil, Sabina Yasmin, and Runa Laila all hailing from Bangladesh.
Bengali music is highly indebted to Lalon, Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Ramprasad Sen and Jasim Uddin.
Notable Bengali music composers active in Calcutta (Kolkata) in the 1930s through the 1980s include Himangshu Dutta, Kamal Dasgupta, Rai Chand Boral, Pankaj Kumar Mullick, Anupam Ghatak, Sachin Dev Burman, Rahul Dev Burman Nachiketa Ghosh, Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Salil Chowdhury, Sudhin Dasgupta, Shyamal Mitra, Kabir Suman, Nachiketa Chakraborty, Ajoy Das, and Bappi Lahiri, while Pranab Roy, Gouri Prasanna Majumdar, Kabir Suman and Pulak Bandyopadhyay were well-known lyricists.
Nachiketa Chakraborty continues his established musical career for decades being a multi-dimensional singer, lyricist and composer with extraordinary class and caliber.
The boss of Bengali Music revolution in the 90s, the educator honored as Banga Bhushan, who ignites the moral value in millions in the society, the philosopher who simplify life’s equations in simple language, the avenger who inspires common people to throw away an age-old rotten ruling system from Bengal.He is an idol for numerous people across the world and has inspired many renowned Bengali singers from time to time (Editor: Rajonyo Nandi).
In the 1990s hard rock and heavy metal broke through the mainstream with bands like LRB, Feelings, Ark and Warfaze, Miles, Maqsood O' Dhaka, Souls etc.
Some famous Bangladeshi bands are Nova, Uccharon, Spondan, Souls, Obscure, Different Touch, Feedback, Ark, Miles, LRB, Warfaze, Joler Gaan, Dalchhut, Avash, Shironamhin, Nagar Baul.
English bands from Kolkata include Cassini's Division, Bolepur Bluez, Insomnia, Underground Authority, Pseudonym, Chronic Xorn, are also notable.
