Sandhya Mukhopadhyay Demise

Last tribute to Sandhya Mukhopadhyay

- by a staff reporter

16 February, 2022 Kolkata: An evening in the golden sky of Bengali songs and classical music caused with the demise of Sandhya Mukhopadhyay. She died at the age of 90 on 15 February 2022 in a private hospital in Kolkata after a heart attack. Also known as ‘Geetashree’ (famous singer) Sandhya Mukhopadhyay has gone forever.

She was born on October 4, 1931, in the Bengali month of Ashwin, when the hyacinths were falling. Her father Narendranath Mukherjee was also a good singer. Her mother Hemprabha Devi used to sing great ‘tappa’*.

Her music training started at an early age with her parents.

Sandhya Mukhopadhyay's first teacher was Yamini Ganguly. Sandhya (Samdhya Mukhopadhyay) trained with him for six years. She then expressed her wish to her elder brother Rabindranath Mukhopadhyay to learn music from Ghulam Ali Khan. Sandhya went to Mukhopadhyay 's elder brother Gyan Prakash Ghosh. At that time Ghulam Ali Khan was in the house of Gyan Prakash Ghosh. After a while, Ghulam Ali agreed to give Sandhya Mukhopadhyay the training of singing.

From then on, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay used to address Ghulam Ali Khan as his father. In the mind of Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, a saying of the elder Ghulam Ali Khan was imprinted for the rest of her life. Ghulam Ali Khan's songs entered her consciousness as soon as she took training in the harmonious raga (melody) along with Jaunpuri, Malkosh, Gauti, Joyjayanti, Emon, Bageshri etc.

Begum Akhtar taught Sandhya Mukhopadhyay how to rehearse with Tanpura (a musical instrument) with her own hands. She also accompanied Begum Akhtar's song in Tanpura. Sandhya Mukhopadhyay took Durga Puja's song to an unimaginable height in Bengal. ‘Mahishasurmardini’ is intimately involved with the Bengali month, Ashwin's dawn. And Sandhya Mukhopadhyay’s voice is involved with it. When the show went live, she would go around singing different songs every year like other artists. Many people remember those memories after the death of ‘Geetashree’.

Lata Mangeshkar and Sandhya Mukherjee –the two were lifelong close friends. Reaching the pinnacle of fame, that friendship did not break. The two friends moved to another world of melody just nine days apart.

Note:

*‘Tappa’ is one of the four major genres of Indian music; the other three are Dhrupad, Kheyal and Thumri. There are two types of ‘Tappa’: Hindustani and Bengali. The Hindustani Tappa was established as a classical music by Golam Nabi alias Shori Mian (1742-1792), a talented musician of the Nawab-Darbar of Ayodhya, and the Bengali Tappa was started by Ramnidhi Gupta alias Nidhugupat (1741-1839).

It is said that long ago Arab traders used to come to the Punjab region of India via Iran and Afghanistan for trade. Carrying business items on the backs of camels, they would make vibrating musical tunes with the rhythm of footsteps while walking in groups at night, which eventually became a regional musical genre for camel drivers in Punjab. In Punjab, this folk song was known as 'Dopa', which has been translated into Hindi. Radhamohan Sen wrote in Sangeetatarang, ‘From Punjab came the birth of Tappa / Its rule in two steps.’ Shori Mian decorated it with various ornaments.

‘Tappa’ means ‘jump’; another meaning of ‘Tappa’ is ‘abbreviation’. Tappa songs are short because they do not have as much space as ‘Dhrupad’ and ‘Kheyal’. According to the structure of ‘Kheyal’, the verses of this song are composed in two verses. The story of ‘love-separation’ is the main theme of ‘Tappa’.

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