‘Sharadiya’ songs to touch a milestone this Durga Puja

KOLKATA: Exactly a century ago, the countdown to Durga Pujas was an exciting one for people of undivided Bengal. Because that was the year when, for the first time ever, they got special Durga Puja albums. The Gramophone Company started the tradition of releasing special ‘Sharadiya’ numbers sung by popular singers of that era in 1914, a tradition that was alive and kicking till the late 1980s.According to the records of The Gramophone Company, despite the commencement of World War I, the ‘Sharadiya’ releases of 1914 evoked an encouraging response.
Vinyl records collector Susanto Kumar Chatterjee, who has just dug up this vignette of history, says that 14 vinyl discs were released by The Gramophone Company in 1914 as part of its ‘Sharadiya’ offer. The release was preceded by the publication of a ‘Sharadabali’ by the company announcing the release of the discs that were sold at a few shops in Calcutta and Dhaka. Chatterjee, a former officer of CESC (part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group that owns Saregama India Ltd, the present day avatar of The Gramophone Company of India Ltd), has the 1914 ‘Sharadabali’ in his possession.
The ‘Sharadabali’ of 1914 announces that a “10-inch violet double sided 78 RPM disc” priced at 3 Rupaiyah and 12 annas each, quite a princely sum in those days, would have six songs by Manodasundari Dasi, Narayan Chandra Mukherjee and K Mullick. Dasi’s two songs—‘Eso eso boley rasik neye’ and ‘Aar sundaro na’— were kirtans while Mukherjee’s ‘dekho lo sajani ashey’ was an ‘Agomoni’ song and ‘O Maa trinoyonee jeyo na jeyo na’ was a ‘Bijoya’ number. Similarly, Mullick’s first number (‘Giri eki tabo bibechona’) was an ‘Agomoni’ song while the second (‘ki hobey, ki hobey Uma choley jabe’) was a ‘Bijoya’ song. The ‘Sharadabali’ also announced the release of 13 ‘Krishnabarna double-sided records’ at 3 Rupaiyah each. Twelve of these featured songs by 11 singers and each of these records had just one song recorded on each side. Mullick’s full name was Mohammad Kasem Mullick, but he used to conceal his Muslim identity.
The 11 singers were Bedana Dasi, Miss Das, Krishna Dhamini, Malati Mala Dasi, Sarala Bai, Chandi Charan Bandopadhyay, Abhayapada Chattopadhyay, Sashibhushan Dey, ‘Adhyapak’ Chittaranjan Goswami, Dakhinaranjan Guha and Narayan Chandra Mukherjee. The other record featured instrumental numbers by Rajendranath Chattppadhyay (clarionet), Tulsidas Chattopadhyay (behala) and Ghanashyam Mukhopadhyay (behala). The singer Miss Das (Amala Das), incidentally, was the first Bengali female singer hailing from a ‘respectable’ family. She was the sister of ‘Deshabandhu’ Chittaranjan Das; all other female singers of those times were ‘baijis’.
Chatterjee, whose Dum Dum apartment is choc-a-bloc with tens of thousands of vinyl records, a dozen record players and 10 gramophones besides a treasure trove of album covers, memorabilia and booklets by various music companies announcing releases of Durga Puja musical albums from the 1930s, started collecting records from 1982. His grandfather, renowned ophthalmologist MN Chatterjee, was an avid musician and had recorded an album with The Gramophone Company in 1904-05.
Record companies like Pioneer Records, Hindustan Records, Young India Records and Regal Records followed in the footsteps of The Gramophone Company after 1914 and released their own special Durga Puja albums. The tradition continued till the late 1980s. Chatterjee will play recordings of some of the singers who featured in the 1914 ‘Sharadabali’ and deliver a talk on the subject at Weaver’s Studio Center For The Arts on September 20.