By Partha Chatterjee
Manna Dey, the 2007 Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, has enthralled discerning listeners since the 1950s.
G.P. SAMPATH KUMAR
Manna Dey performing in Bangalore on May 10.
THE Dada Saheb Phalke Award for 2007 has gone to Manna Dey, one of the finest singers to have sung for Hindi and Bengali and other regional language films. The honour, in the opinion of many, has come to him rather late in the day. It cannot be truly exhilarating to be recognised for one’s contribution to the art of playback singing at the age of 90, especially if the last memorable song one sung was well over 30 years ago.
Manna Dey shot into fame in the early 1950s with his rendering of “Chaley Radhey Rani”, a kirtan-based song for Bimal Roy’s moving cinematic rendering of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s Bengali novel Parinita. His sound training in Hindustani music was amply evident here as was his feeling for an emotive form like the kirtan, which he inherited from his uncle, the legendary Krishna Chandra Dey.
After this song, Manna Dey was recognised as a singer with immense potential. Doors opened for him in the Hindi film industry of Bombay, as Mumbai was known in those days. The legendary actor-director Raj Kapoor invited him to sing for Shree 420, the former’s take on socialism; and sing he did. Manna Dey, along with Lata Mangeshkar, sang “Pyaar hua iqrar hua”, written by the poet of the people, Shailendra, and tuned by the music composer duo Shankar-Jaikishan. Recorded 55 years ago, this romantic duet continues to be aired on the radio to this day. It is amongst the finest in the annals of Hindi film songs.
In his autobiography Memories Come Alive, Manna Dey remembers the composer duo thus: “The most interesting feature of Shankar and Jaikishan’s melodies was their sheer novelty and, in that respect, they remain unrivalled.” He felt particularly indebted to Shankar, who, he felt, brought out the best in him. He does not feel the same way though about another stalwart, Sachin Dev Burman, who, when he engaged Manna Dey to render “Upar gagan vishal” for Nitin Bose’s Mashaal, actually wanted him to resurrect K.C. Dey’s style. Of course, it is one of Manna Babu’s finest songs and is terribly difficult to sing. But S.D. Burman never asked him to sing regularly for him even after the singer proved his mettle a hundred times over with other noteworthy composers.
The Hindi film industry has always lacked imagination and has therefore toed the line of least resistance and closed the possibility for innovation. Just because Manna Babu was classically trained and could sing raga-based compositions really well, he was considered “unsuitable” for singing playback on a regular basis for the leading actors of his time, such as Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor. This problem, however, did not affect Mohammed Rafi, also classically trained, who was asked to sing very often for Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Bharat Bhushan, Guru Dutt, Rajendra Kumar and Shammi Kapoor, not to forget Dharmendra and Jeetendra. Why Manna Babu was not given similar opportunities remains inexplicable.