Happy Birthday Salil-da ! (Nov. 19th )

 Raju Bharatan, well-known music & sports critic meets the versatile genius Salil Chowdhury : 

Salil Chowdhury :  composer  extraordinaire

For Salil, humility was never a mask he wore to underscore his talent. 

"The game of football has its set rules, yet along comes a player who, even while performing within those rules, is not quite bound by them. His is the touch of genius. I'm speaking of Pele. And I, Salil Chowdhury, am the Pele of music !"

Salil always came up with the unexpected in the notes he struck.Harmony was the keynote of his music, yet it was a problem pinning him down, such was his erudition, extending from art to literature to music. His imagination took wing even while we were focussed on what, for me , was a crucial musical point.Remarkably ordered in the music room, he was amazingly disorganised in real life. An appointment with him meant nothing. You had to track him down. Once you did so, you were rewarded with musical insights that made you discern that no one, even from Bengal, had brought to the art of scoring the creative impulses this little wizard did. " If you were the first symphonic composer in our music, why in heaven's name," I asked, " didn't  you take your art to the West for evaluation ?"

"But who are they to judge us ?" riposted Salil characteristically. "It may be true I have been inspired by the best of the West. By the best of the West - where other music-makers of your Bombay are driven by the worst of the West. But no one, just no one , in the East or West, do I grant the liberty of judging my creativity. I, as total musician, have a total comprehension of the true intrinsic value of my own work."

As the son of a forest officer based in Assam, Salil Chowdhury was privileged to be exposed to the Western masters, ranging from Beethoven to Bach to Brecht, in his impressionable years. "My father," observed Salil, " was a connoisseur of the finest in Western music. He was playing it all the time and I was listening." 

Salil proved to be a listener with a photographic mind. "My father's being stationed in the forests of Assam" revealed Salil, "resulted in my being exposed early to the verdant vibrancy of the music of that region. It was here I developed my passion for delving into our folk forms and norms. When Bimal Roy, therefore, invited me to score the music for Madhumati(1958 ) ,I knew the theme to be right up my alley." 

courtesy : Frontline Magazine (issue: Nov.3,1995)