Kazi Nazrul Islam (1889-1976)

Composer and songwriter born in Burdwan Dist., Bengal. With Tagore he was the major influence on popular Bengali music in the 20th C. known as the Bidrohi Kavi or Rebel Poet and directly associated with radical nationalist movements (e.g. through the journal Dhoomketu which he edited in 1922, leading to his imprisonment on a charge of sedition), his poetry constitutes the first radical intervention into Hindu and Muslim devotional music, e.g. his famous addresses to the goddess Kali, his ghazal compilations (Chokher Chatak, 1929) and Islamic devotionals (Zulfikar, 1932). Much of his music, continued by the IPTA’s Bengali song repertoire, was polemically seen as a radical-romantic use of the ‘ tradition’ (e.g. Salil Choudhury, 1955). One of the first composer-writers to sign contracts with major record companies in Bengal (for Megaphone and Senola and later HMV) and with the Indian Broadcasting Corp., opening up new employment opportunities to a generation of younger composers such as Anil Biswas, S.D. Burman, Kamal Dasgupta and even Kishore Kumar (whose song Ai ek dui tran char gili gili/bam chick boob chick badhke bol in Kehte Hain Mujhko Raja, 1975, adapts Islam’s famous Cham chiki ude gelo). Created an urban variation of tribal jhumur music for Sailajananda Mukherjee’s Pataal Puri and wrote the songs for Nandini (1941) and Dikshul (1943). Some sources credit him as director for Dhruva, in which he played the Hindu sage Narad. Started Bengal Tiger Pics with Abbasuddin Ahmed. Their film of Islam’s novel Madina remained unfinished.

FILMOGRAPHY (* also act): 1934: Dhruva*; 1935: Pataal Puri; 1936: Graher Pher; 1938: Gora; 1942: Chowringhee.

Music