{"id":10542,"date":"2025-12-28T15:27:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T09:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=10542"},"modified":"2025-12-28T15:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T09:57:16","slug":"salil-chowdhury-creating-music-outside-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/salil-chowdhury-creating-music-outside-the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Salil Chowdhury: Creating Music ‘Outside the Rules’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Salil

Salil Chowdhury with Manna Dey (Pic: Facebook)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSince my childhood, I grew up listening to Western classical music. My father was very fond of Western classical music, and he had a very big collection of symphonies. My father was also a good musician despite being a physician. We used to love Indian classical also\u2026 we had collections of Fayaz Khan, semi-classicals like KC Dey\u2026 I have been hearing them since I was just 4 years old. So this has gone into my blood, that is why these symphonies are there, I don\u2019t consider them as foreign because I grew up with them,\u201d Salil Chowdhury had recalled in an interview to Mrutyunjay Kumar Jha, a prominent broadcast journalist1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Spending his childhood at a tea estate in Assam, where his father was a doctor, Salil listened to and absorbed the fantastic selection of Western classical music his father had. His father used to stage plays and musical events with the workers in the estate, and Salil imbibed the beautiful music of the North East,\u00a0as well as Rabindra Sangeet.<\/p>\n

Salil was exposed to India\u2019s Freedom Struggle, the tragic Bengal famine, and the Peasant Movement very early, when he was still young and impressionable. He was thus deeply influenced by Communist ideology. This was during the British regime, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He went underground among the paddy fields of the Sundarbans with the help of local peasants but used this period productively to develop his writing for plays and songs, while soaking in the music of the land.<\/p>\n

For eight years, until 1953, when he moved to Bombay, he worked in several Bengali films as a composer. His script for a Bengali film about a peasant dispossessed of his land, forced to migrate to Calcutta and suffer hardship there, attracted the attention of ace director Bimal Roy. Roy then sought to make a film in the style of Vittorio De Sica\u2019s Bicycle Thieves<\/em>, presenting parallel cinema as a healthy alternative to the glitzy, garish commercial cinema. This movement was gaining ground in West Bengal and was later elevated into a cult art form by Satyajit Ray in his Bengali films of the mid-1950s.<\/p>\n

Bimal Roy invited Salil to join him in Bombay to adapt his Bengali script into a Hindi film, Do Bigha Zamin<\/em>. While the story’s basic skeletal idea is attributed to Rabindranath Tagore, it was substantially transformed and expanded for the screen by Salil Chowdhury. After a few twists and turns, Salil found himself in Bombay, not only as a story writer but also making his dream debut as a music composer in Hindi films with Do Bigha Zamin<\/em>. The film’s songs and music won several awards and were widely acclaimed, firmly establishing Salil as a successful music director in Bombay.<\/p>\n

\"Nargis,

The Indian Delegation in Moscow, 1959 (Third from L to R) Nargis, Bimal Roy, Nirupa Roy, Salil Chowdhury, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Radhu Karmakar (in front)<\/p><\/div>\n

In the Hindi film music milieu of the early 1950s, when Salil arrived in 1953 to make his mark, composers such as Anil Biswas, Naushad, Vasant Desai, C. Ramchandra, S D Burman, Shankar Jaikishan, Madan Mohan, and Roshan were already firmly established, each known for a distinctive musical style and for films that succeeded largely on the strength of their music alone.<\/p>\n

Into this competitive world stepped Salil with memorable scores for films such as Do Bigha Zamin <\/em>(Dharti kahe pukaar ke<\/em><\/a>), Biraj Bahu (Mere mann bhula bhula<\/a>),<\/em> Naukri<\/em> (Chota sa ghar hoga<\/em><\/a>), Parivar<\/em> (Jhir jhir jhir jhir badarwa barse <\/em><\/a>and Jaa tose nahin boloon Kanhaiya<\/em><\/a>),\u00a0 Taangewali<\/em> (Halke halke chalo sanware<\/em><\/a>), Jagte Raho<\/em> (Zindagi khwab hai<\/em><\/a> and Jago Mohan pyare<\/em><\/a>), and Ek Gaon Ki Kahani<\/em> (Talat Mahmood\u2019s delectable Raat ne kya kya khwab dikhaye<\/em><\/a> and Jhoome re neela ambar jhoome, dharti ko chume re<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Jaa tose nahin bolu Kanhaiya<\/strong><\/em> (Parivar<\/em>, 1956) Salil Chowdhury \/ Shailendra \/ Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey (based on Raaga Hamsadhwani)<\/span><\/p>\n