Legendary singer, composer Bhupen Hazarika dies

Movies

Saturday, November 05, 2011 (Mumbai)    

Legendary singer-composer Dr Bhupen Hazarika, undergoing treatment at a hospital in Mumbai, has passed away. He died at 4.37 p.m. today at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital.

"It was a multi-organ failure. The end came around 4.30 pm," said Jayanta Narayan Saha, in-charge of media relations at the hospital.

The 85-year-old Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner was undergoing treatment at the hospital since June 29, after he complained of breathlessness and was on dialysis. Both of his kidneys failed and since then the legendary composer was bedridden.

His health deteriorated on October 23 after he developed pneumonia. He had to undergo a minor surgery in which doctors inserted a food pipe into his system.

Dr Hazarika was born in Sadiya, Assam in 1926 and began his career as a child artist in the film Indramalti singing Biswha Bijoy Noi Jawan.

A balladeer who composed his own lyrics and music, Dr Hazarika lent his voice to the film Gandhi To Hitler, where he sang Mahatma Gandhi's favourite bhajan, Vaishnava Jana To.

Dr Hazarika produced, directed, composed music and sang for Assamese films such as Era Batar Sur (1956), Shakuntala (1960), Pratidhwani (1964), and Lotighoti (1967).

A lesser known fact about the musical genius was that he was a trained journalist, who had studied Mass Communications from the prestigious Columbia University in the forties. As a reporter, he covered the Chinese War, which is where he wrote the poignant Koto Juwanor Mrityu Hol sitting in the Bomdila Club with a heap of dead bodies of Indian soldiers.

He was deeply involved in political and social issues and remained the peoples' voice, bridging all gaps between an area which is otherwise seen as virtually cut off.

He composed the music for several outstanding Bengali films, such as Jiban Trishna, Jonakir Alo, and Chameli Memsaab.

Involved in the Indian Civil Society Movement from his childhood, he continued writing and composing masterpieces steeped in social consciousness, which ironically are a striking contrast to the famous love songs for which he gained mass recognition.

Dr Hazarika, who had a genius for weaving a magical tapestry out of traditional Assamese music and lyrics, was regarded as one of the greatest living cultural communicators of South Asia.

Many in this country identify him with the song Dil Hum Hum Kare (Rudaali 1993), which was the Hindi version of the famous song Buku Hom Hom Kare.

He was awarded the Padma Bhushan (2001), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1992), the Asom Ratna (2009) and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2009).

Dr Hazarika was also recognised as the first Indian music director for Best Music internationally for the film Rudaali at the Asia Pacific International Film Festival in Japan in 1993.

He was also the winner of the All India Critic Association Award for the Best Performing Folk Artist (1979).

This year he celebrated his birthday, sadly, in the ICU of the hospital on September 8 when he cut a cake with fans who sang his favourite numbers

Celebrated Indian singer Bhupen Hazarika dies

 

Bhupen Hazarika was a multi-talented singer, composer and writer

Celebrated Indian folk singer and composer Bhupen Hazarika has died in Mumbai, aged 86.

A hospital spokesman said he died of multiple organ failure after an illness lasting several months.

Hazarika was best known for his folk songs and ballads, sung in a number of Indian languages, but he also sang and wrote music for hundreds of films.

He was known as the Bard of Brahmaputra after the river flowing through his native Assam state in eastern India.

"As a child, I grew up listening to tribal music - its rhythm saw me developing an inclination towards singing," he said in an interview.

"Perhaps, I inherited my singing skills from my mother, who sang lullabies to me." he said.

He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Indian cinema's highest honour, for his contribution to film music.

He had a PhD in communication from Columbia University in New York.

 

The unsung genius of Assam's balladeer - Bhupen Hazarika (1926-2011)

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Mumbai, November 5, 2011

 

PTI Bhupen Hazarika sings a song during the Rabindra Utsav celebrations in Guwahati, Assam. fIle photo: PTI

 

Politically aware and deeply compassionate, Hazarika used his songs to awaken society to truth

 

Gutsy and avowedly anti-establishment, Bhupen Hazarika, who died in Mumbai on Saturday after a prolonged illness, was a musical genius who put Assam on the country's cultural map through his compositions and songs and his contribution to the development of Assamese cinema. For all his accomplishments, however, he remained, for the rest of the country, an unsung hero.

Not quite a household name beyond Bengal, his multi-faceted talents as a singer, music director and producer are relatively unfamiliar to the wider Indian audience.

Hazarika's contributions went far beyond cinema for which he was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1992. For him, music was an instrument of social change. From early in his life, he was at the forefront of a social battle against the entrenched forces of casteism that sneered at a member of the ‘Dom' community making it as a musician of note, and kept him away from the upper-caste Brahmin woman he had loved.

Eventually, when the spirited Hazarika did marry, it was to a Brahmin woman, his revenge of sorts against a caste-ridden society.

His guts stood him in good stead when he contested, and won, an election to the Vidhan Sabha as an Independent in 1967. However, later, when Hazarika joined the Bhartiya Janata Party and his constituency deserted him, showing an ability to make a fine distinction between the ace artiste and an opportunistic politician, he admitted privately that he had made a political mistake, and concentrated on composing songs that challenged the political order.

Born in 1926, in Sadiya, Assam, Hazarika studied in Guwahati and Banaras Hindu University before going on to receive a Ph.D in mass communications at Columbia University in New York in 1952. His thesis was on the use of cinema for mass education – he had himself sung for Jyotiprasada Agarwala's 1939 film, Indramalati, as a child – and it was to the movies that he returned. Closely associated with the emergence and flowering of Assamese cinema as a singer, composer, producer and director, Hazarika also strived to encourage the arts throughout the North-east.

Acutely aware of the political dimensions of culture, Hazarika used his music to rouse the Assamese gentry during the bhasha andolan. Clearly influenced by Bishnu Rabha, Hazarika derived happily from folklore for his craft. Almost all through his career, he composed anti-establishment songs, using his own rich baritone to voice them powerfully. One of his most popular songs, ‘Bistirno dupare', loosely based on Paul Robeson's ‘Ol Man River,' spoke of the travails of the Ganga which has been witness to poverty and oppression through the ages.

Particularly notable were the songs in which he raised his voice against ULFA, which he regarded as monster. Early on in his career, when he was associated with the Indian Peoples Theatre Association, his Leftist leanings came to the fore with songs like “Dola” where, through the voice of a palanquin bearer, he speaks truth to power, telling the rich that their world would not run without the sweat of the poor.

His humanist song “Manuhe Manuhor Babe” which was also translated into Bengali, talked of pulling down man-made barriers, and was to get Hazarika recognition across the world. His oeuvre though included Assam's famous Bihu songs, both patriotic and romantic.

Hindi audiences took much longer to appreciate his worth. It would remain one of the sad ironies of his life that Hazarika had to wait almost sixty summers for a lasting relationship with India's Hindi-speaking world. It came courtesy “Dil Hoom Hoom Kare”, a song with melancholy as its middle name. The song, in director Kalpana Lajmi's Rudaali, was not exactly in Hindi but its mournful music and soul piercing rendition by both Lata Mangeshkar and Hazarika ensured that many hummed it without being really able to truly appreciate Gulzar's lyrics. It was to become Hazarika's calling card for the next many years. Ironic that an artist from Assam had to rely on a Rajasthani song to strike a chord with a larger audience.

In fact, Rudaali was not Hazarika's first foray into Hindi cinema. Some 20 years earlier, Hazarika had composed the music for the Vinod Khanna-Saira Bano-starrer Aarop.

Its song “Naino Mein Darpan Hai” with Bano on a cycle with Khanna introduced Shillong – then the capital of Assam – and its scenes to Hindi cineastes. Then in the mid-1980s, Hazarika was at it again. This time with Lajmi's Ek Pal which was shot in the tea gardens of Assam. Later, he used his genius to guide Lajmi during the making of the National-Award winning Daman.

Assam in mourning

Brahmaputra balladeer

She was only nine years old when one of Assam's cultural icons and revolutionaries, Bishnu Prasad Rabha, took her to Kolkata to can songs on gramophone record. One of the four songs sung by this little girl to make two gramophone records, a great privilege in the 1930s, was composed by her father Nilakanta Hazarika. The tune of the song was given by her elder brother Bhupen Hazarika, barely 13 years old then.

The little girl grew up to be a popular singer in Assam, as Sudakhshina Sarma, someone who had been a close witness to the rise of Bhupen Hazarika as a musician whose popularity went thousands of miles beyond the shores of Brahmaputra. Sudakshina, the eldest of the celebrated balladeer's sisters, was also acompanion in his musical journey that spanned over seven decades. In a chat in Guwahati where she lives, Sudakshina, in her 70s now, takes the readers of The Hindu through the journey that made Bhupen Hazarika a legendary mass singer. Edited excerpts:

Bhupen Hazarika inspired millions when he was alive. A sea of people in Assam, irrespective of caste, creed and religion, had come out of their houses to receive him even after his death. What made him such a popular singer?

Bhupenda's close association with the cultural icons of Assamese society — Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha and Natsurjya Phani Sarma — had greatly influenced him to compose and sing songs of humanity. They portrayed the real world before him. Besides, our father late Nilakanta Hazarika and mother late Santipriya Hazarika had progressive outlook which perhaps influenced Bhupenda a lot. They used to tell us to know the world and make friendship will everyone to know them. Wherever Bhupenda went he used to come back home picking the folk tunes and learn songs of various tribes and communities and would teach us. He used to compose songs and use various elements of folk music and folk culture which perhaps made his songs closer to the hearts of people belonging to different tribes and communities. This also helped bring various cultures closer to each other. He was a real lover of mankind and his deep love for humanity was reflected in his compositions and singing. Later when he had gone to do his Ph.D in Mass Communication in Columbia University, Jyoti Prasad Agarwala asked him to meet the legendary singer Paul Robson there. Bhupenda's love for humanity increased manifold after meeting Robson the reflection of which is seen in the songs composed and sung by him in the subsequent period and these songs took him closeer to a wide sections of people.

How far his close association with the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) influenced his music ?

The golden seven decades of the musical career of Bhupenda was also the golden decade of IPTA (1952-1962) when he became closely associated with it. I travelled with him and sang in many places. It is in this period that he composed and sang some of the most popular numbers like “Dola Dola”, “Paneir Punakon”, “Rongmon Macholoi gol”, etc. in which he sang the sufferings of the downtrodden. After his return from the United States in 1953, Bhupenda came into close contact with Hemanga Biswas and other IPTA activists. However, because of his association with IPTA, Bhupenda was not allowed to sing in the annual Bihu function at the popular Latasil playground of Guwahati. Then Hemanga Biswas published a small booklet and printed some of Bhupenda's songs and distributed in the Bihu function.

To what extent he was associated with IPTA?

The Guwahati chapter of the IPTA was formed in 1944.

Then Jyoti Prasad Agarwal was the President, Hemanga Biswasthe Secretary and Bishnu Prasad Rabha was the vice president of IPTA. Bhupenda became associated with IPTA in 1946. When he had returned from America Jyoti Prasad Agarwala had already passed away. Bhupenda became more active with IPTA then. Bhupenda was the secretary of the Reception Committee of the third All Assam Conference of IPTA held in Guwahati in 1955. Bhupenda also designed the conference venue gate. He was then working as a Professor in Gauhati University and brought the famous actor and IPTA activist Balraj Sahani as the chief guest of the conference on his scooter from the airport to the conference venue. It is through his association with IPTA that I met my late husband Dilip Sarma who was also an IPTA activist and a popular mass singer.

Would you share some childhood memories with Bhupenda?

Bhupenda was the eldest among our 10 brothers and sisters. He was ten years elder to me. He was very caring but used to rule us like a responsible guardian. He used to buy cakes and biscuits from Sheikh Brothers bakers ( a popular confectionary in Pan Bazaar, Guwahati) with the money he had earned from All India Radio. He was only 13 years old when he composed and sang one of the most popular and powerful song, “Agni Jugor Firingoti Moi, Natun Axom Gohim.” (“I am the spark of the revolutionary era; I shall build a new Assam”.)