Introduction to Bengali Basic Songs

Salil started composing the modern Bengali songs from the early fifties. One of his first songs 'Sei Meye'(1950) sung by the famous Rabindra Sangeet singer Suchitra Mitra was in one way an exceptionaly haunting and beautiful song and in another way it continued the story of Rabindranath Thakur's famous song 'Krishnokoli aami tarei boli'. Salil's interpretation of that beautiful doe-eyed dark girl was the harsh reality of the poverty of Bengal. No romanticism here...

Salil's songs, unlike his contemporaries, never talked about the moon, the stars, the birds and the romantic love.

His songs were about the end of romance, the stark reality and broken dreams. His songs were also of new optimism, new hopes and new dreams.

Salil nearly always wrote the lyrics of his songs. In a few exceptional cases he composed for some other poets and lyricists. His musical interpretations of the poems 'Abaak Prithibi' , 'Runner' and 'Thikana' of the legendary Bengali poet and his close friend Sukanto Bhattyacharya, who sadly died at a very early age, have become a part of the Bengali musical heritage along with classics such as 'Gaanyer Bodhu' .

Salil started experimenting with new techniques, new melody lines with complex chord progressions, using vocal harmony and rich orchestration. In fact one can easily identify a Salil-song from the crowd of other songs just by his unique style. He started a revolution in the Bengali Modern Music and created a new musical style, a 'Gharana'. The gharana of Salil-Sangeet...

In fact, understanding, analyzing and interpreting his songs has become a challenge to many music composers and music lovers. Salil was much ahead of his contemporaries. A composer for the composers. Once you start getting into his music you can only wonder about his unfathomable talent, his deep understanding of melody and harmony, his wonderful feeling for the orchestration and above all his musicality. Behind each and every song Salil composed, there was so much thought, so much imagination and so much melody.

As you can see from the list of singers, Salil used practically every known or less-known singers for his songs. The list of singers in the "Other Singers" page contains no less than 30 different singers. His uncanny ability to compose just the right song for the right voice is remarkable. For example, it seems like "aami paarini bujhite paarini" was just cut out for the classically trained voice of Manabendra Mukherjee and similarly "Kaachhe theke bhule gechhe mon" was just the perfect song for the renowned singer of Atul Prasad songs - Krishna Chatterjee.

Bengali John Travolta

Kolkata-based Channel 8 to launch Bengali movie channel

A Kolkata-based production house, is launching a Bengali movie channel under the banner of Bangla Entertainment Pvt Ltd. The new channel, Channel 8 Talkies, will air only Bengali movies and is scheduled to go on air by the first week of December 2007. The company also plans to launch a general entertainment channel by July 2008.

Ashoke Surana, promoter of this new channel, said, “There is a tremendous demand for movie channels on the national network. There is a ready market for cinema channels and regional movie channels like Marathi Talkies, which have been very successful. Also, people are perhaps more eager for a single sitting entertainment, which does not require them to sit in front of the TV everyday at a particular time.”

Initially, the channel would be on a trial basis, but would eventually become an encrypted channel. Regarding the content, Surana said, “We have about 1,000 films and acquisition of new films are on. We also plan to get into digital movie production.”

According to Shubhojit Kumar Ganguly, Business Head, Bangla Entertainment Pvt Ltd, “Any channel being launched today has to be cost conscious, and considering the fact that we have our own fairly large library, we have a benefit over any other film channel. Therefore, we hope that our bottomline would be healthy.”

Channel 8 has done production work for Zee Hindi and were partners to Aakaash Bangla for all their non-fiction programmes as well as marketing of Aakaash Bangla nationally.

Source from exchange4media.com