Salil Chowdhury

Indian singer songwriter, composer, poet, lyricist and story writer

Salil Chowdhury (19 November 1925 – 5 September 1995) was an Indian music director, songwriter, lyricist, writer and poet who predominantly composed for Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam films. He composed music for films in 13 languages. This includes over 75 Hindi films, 41 Bengali films, 27 Malayalam films, and a few Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Odia and Assamese films. His musical ability was widely recognised and acknowledged in the Indian film industry. He was an accomplished composer and arranger who was proficient in several musical instruments, including flute, the piano, and the esraj. He was also widely acclaimed and admired 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. 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. 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.

Salil Chowdhury married the painter Jyoti Chowdhury in July 1952 in a temple. He had three daughters with her – Aloka, Tulika and Lipika. Later, he had a court marriage with singer Sabita Banerjee, with whom he had two sons, Sukanta and Sanjoy, and two daughters, Antara and Sanchari. Sanjoy Chowdhury is a successful music composer and has scored music for over 100 feature films. Sabita Chowdhury was a legendary singer and their daughter Antara Chowdhury too a known singer. Smt. Sabita Chowdhury died on 29 June 2017.

Salil's music was a blending of Eastern and the Western music traditions. He had once said: "I want to create a style which shall transcend borders – a genre which is emphatic and polished, but never predictable". He dabbled in a lot of things and it was his ambition to achieve greatness in everything he did. The guitarist eventually turned out to be maestro Ilaiyaraaja. A. R. Rahman's father, R. K. Shekhar used to conduct Salil Chowdhury's arrangements in South Indian film music. Rahman once said that his musical understanding was greatly influenced by the musical sessions conducted by Salil Chowdhury.