Early influences – childhood and teenage

Salil Chowdhury was born on 19 November 1925, in a village called Ghazipur in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Salil's childhood was spent in the Tea Gardens Region of Assam. His father was reputed to stage plays with coolies and other low-paid workers of the tea-gardens.^[1] While his father, Dr Gyanendra Chowdhury, was the Medical Officer at Hathikuli Tea Estate near Kaziranga in Assam, between 1931 and 1951, the Chief Medical Officer was Dr Maloni, an Irish national. During his early years, he used to listen to western orchestral music on Dr Maloni's gramophone. To date, this information stands engraved in black granite in Hathikuli Tea Estate in his memory. During the second world war Chowdhury got the opportunity to closely observe human sufferings, hunger and problem of the refugees.^[2] He studied in Harinavi D.V.A.S High School and there after graduating from Bangabasi College, affiliated to the University of Calcutta in Kolkata, and during this period his political ideas were formulated along with a considerable maturity in his musical ideas.^[1]

As a teenager in school, Chowdhury already had an interest in music, and played the flute, harmonium and esraj. He learnt to play the piano from his elder brother at the age of 6. Once in college, he also began to compose tunes. His first popular song was "Becharpoti tomar bichaar" (lit. the days of new judgement have come because people are now awake), set to a kirtan tune. Chowdhury composed it in 1945 during the Indian National Army trials when the freedom fighters had returned from Andaman jail. Chowdhury shifted to a village in 24 parganas to live with his maternal uncles, when he was witness to a big peasant uprising there in 1943. He got involved with them and began writing songs for the peasant movement. In 1944, while studying for his MA, Chowdhury witnessed people dying on the streets of Calcutta, as 50 lakh Bengalis died during the famine. The famine was human-made as local rice was instead directed to Britain's war effort overseas, leading to scarcity, aggravated by black marketeers and hoarders. This led Chowdhury to become fully involved in the peasant movement, and he became a full-time member of IPTA and the Communist Party. Subsequently, arrest warrants were issued in his name, and he went underground in the Sunderbans, hiding in paddy fields and supported by local peasants. During this time, he continued writing plays and songs.^[3]

In 1944, a young Salil came to Calcutta for his graduate studies. He joined the IPTA^[1] (Indian Peoples Theater Association) the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India. He started writing songs^[1] and setting tunes for them.^[1] The IPTA theatrical outfit travelled through the villages and the cities bringing these songs to the common man. Songs like Bicharpati, Runner and Abak prithibi^[1] became extremely popular with the general population at the time.

Songs like Gnaayer bodhu (গাঁয়ের বধূ), which he composed at the age of 20, brought about a new wave of Bengali music.^[1] Almost every notable singer at the time from West Bengal had sung at least one of his songs. A few examples are Debabrata Biswas, Manna Dey, Hemanta Mukherjee, Shyamal Mitra, Sandhya Mukherjee, Manabendra Mukherjee, Subir Sen, and Pratima Banerjee.

Film career

The first Bengali film in which Salil Chowdhury composed music was Paribortan, released in 1949. Mahabharati, released in 1994, was the last of the 41 Bengali films where he rendered his music.

In an interview with All India Radio, Salil Chowdhury described his coming to Bombay in 1953 as a "stroke of luck". He was writing the script for a Bengali film about a peasant who was disowned of his land and had gone to Calcutta to earn money as a Rickshaw puller. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who heard of it from Chowdhury during a visit to Calcutta, liked it immensely and suggested that he narrate it to the director Bimal Roy. Roy heard it, and asked him to meet him again the next morning. However, when Chowdhury went to meet him the next day, he learnt that Roy had rushed to Bombay on an urgent call. A week later, he received a telegram from Roy that he wanted to turn his script into a movie. This resulted in Chowdhury's debut in the Hindi film industry in 1953^[1] as the music director for Do Bigha Zamin (1953). The movie was based on Tagore's poem by the same name, but the story was different and was written by Salil Chowdhury himself. Directed by Bimal Roy, this film took his career to new heights when it became the first film to win the Filmfare Best Movie Award and won the international Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. ^[3]

After working for about 20 years in Bengali and Hindi films, he entered the Malayalam film industry and, in 1964, composed music for the movie Chemmeen.^[1] He went on to compose music for films in 13 languages. This includes over 75 Hindi films, 41 Bengali films, around 27 Malayalam films, and a few Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Odia and Assamese films. Asked about his method, Chowdhury described it thus – He would usually ask the film maker to explain the situation to him, then Chowdhury would compose a tune to suit the mood, and the lyric writer would set in words. This remained his practice for most of his films including Madhumati, in which Shailendra wrote the lyrics subsequently.^[3]

During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, Chowdhury contributed to the programmes of the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra based in Kolkata. His 1971 album Bangla Amar Bangla was meant for the liberation struggle. Later, when Chowdhury visited Bangladesh in 1990, he was given the welcome of a mass leader in Dhaka. Chowdhury was posthumously awarded the Muktijoddha Maitreye Samman in 2012.^[4]

Poet, Playwright, Short story writer, Salil also directed a film Pinjre Ke Panchhi starring Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahani and Mehmood based on his own story and screenplay in 1966. Salil Chowdhury was the Founder of Bombay Youth Choir, the first ever Secular Choir in India in 1958 as its composer and conductor - he inspired scores of secular choir groups to be formed throughout India formulating a new genre of music using vocal polyphony for Indian Folk and Contemporary Music.