The New Nation - Internet Edition

Spotlight on Nazrul music

Dr. Karunamaya Goswami

Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) is a major Bengali poet and composer. He enriched the modern urban music of Bengal in many ways. Nazrul came of a poor family from Burdwan now in West Bengal. He struggled hard for a living ever since he was a child. He showed strong symptoms of poetic and musical talent at an early age when he worked for folk musical troupes. In 1917 Nazrul, then a promising student, left school to join army. Even in the barracks in Karachi, he took interest in writing and composing. At the end of the First World War, when his regiment was demobilised, Nazrul came to Calcutta in March 1920. There he started his career as a writer, composer and journalist. He stood up with an indomitable will against the British subjugation of India and against evils in all forms. He began writing poems on rebellious ideas and was known as the 'rebel poet' of Bengal. He was arrested on charges of writing and publishing a seditious poem in November 1922 and was sentenced to one year's riogorous imprisonment. He was freed in December 1923. From the end of 1925 Nazrul began to take part in active politics of socialist orientation and worked for economic freedom of the toiling people.

Despite all this, Nazrul always found a time to compose songs. In the initial years he took a larger interest in the patriotic song genre. From the end of 1926 he began to compose ghazals and concentrated more on music and literature than on politics. Nazrul Islam joined the gramophone company His Master's Voice in Calcutta by the middle of 1928 as a composer and trainer. This marked the beginning of an exceptionally productive period of his life as a songwriter and composer. He worked as a composer of stage music and more importantly as a composer of film music. His contribution in the initial years of talkies in Bengal is deemed to be historic. Nazrul started broadcasting for the Calcutta station of All India Radio in 1938. The broadcasts done at regular intervals lighted up some old obscure ragas and also some ragas created freshly by him. At the height of his creative life, Kazi Nazrul Islam fell seriously ill in 1942. That was an incapacitating illness from which he never recovered. He lost his power of speech and mental capacity and continued to live only physically. He was then only 43. Nazrul was brought to Dhaka in May, 1972 after the emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state. Arrangements were made for him to live in state honour. Nazrul breathed his last in Dhaka on August 29, 1976 and was laid to rest with full state honour in the compound of Dhaka University mosque. He is the national poet of Bangladesh.

Nazrul's creative life extended for nearly 22 years. His life as a composer, however, did not stretch for more than 16 years. He composed an amazing number of over three thousand songs in such a short period. It is not only a question of number but also a question of variety of forms and themes. His creativity will ever remain a wonder in the history of music.

Nazrul's life as a composer is divided into four phases. The first, extending from 1920 to 1926, is the phase of patriotic songs. The second, extending from the close of 1926 to the middle of 1928, is known as the ghazal phase. The third phase, which extended from 1928 to 1938, is the gramophone company phase. The fourth, called the radio phase, extended from 1938 to the middle of 1942.

Kazi Nazrul Islam is the foremost composer of Bengali patriotic songs. His immortal compositions in this genre have always been sung with fervour. He composed songs on a variety of Swadeshi themes, some of which were old and some were his innovations. Even in songs on traditional themes he infused a new spirit. Songs on freedom movement, for instance, took an unprecedented heroic turn in his style. In the exposition of heroic sentiment, Nazrul presented the uncompromising power of a rebel that had nothing in common with the songs in this genre composed earlier. The songs on communal harmony also took a new turn in his compositions. As a genre it was old. But Nazrul gave it a new direction in its invigorating appeal of music and language.

Songs on social awakening too found a new idiom in his compositions reflecting an indomitable force of will. The categories like "songs of socialist inspiration" and "songs of Muslim awakening" were something new in the history of Bengali patriotic songs. The Bengali poet-composers had been speaking about political freedom alone. But Nazrul spoke of the economic emancipation of the weaker sections of the society thereby laying the foundation in Bengal of the progressive cultural movement. His songs of Muslim awakening had also contributed to promoting Muslim renaissance in Bengal. His songs on the awakening of women proved to be exceptionally inspiring. The tradition of patriotic poetry and music in Bengal has been enriched by many poets and composers ever since 1867 but none equals Nazrul.

Ghazal, a kind of love song, was first developed in Iran. In India it was accommodated in Hindustani music and became a prominent branch of Urdu poetry. It stood as a light classical Hindustani form next to thumri. Urdu ghazals flourished over hundreds of years and all the powerful Urdu poets paid attention to it. But in Bengal none before Kazi Nazrul Islam took any effective interest in building up the ghazal trend of urban music. Atulprasad Sen's work in this genre was not much known. Only Nazrul was coming out with his overwhelming ghazal compositions one after another. They created an unprecedented interest in the Bengali music loving people. No other musical genre was received with so much of immediate popularity. No other musical genre was paid so much of attention by all the leading Bengali performers at a time. Nazrul just created an era, in sweetness and melancholy, in tender and subtle improvisation, and in poetic and musical expressiveness of a different kind, the ghazals of Nazrul became the proponent of a new way of composition that purely belonged to him so much so that Bengali ghazals and Nazrul are synonymous.

In the third phase of his life as a composer, Nazrul worked for the gramophone companies in Calcutta. He also worked for the stage and the film. This phase marked a tremendous flourishing of Nazrul's talent as a lyricist and composer. He was able to compose songs on all possible themes, in all possible musical forms and at an incredible speed. He stunned every one by his gift of impromptu composition. Most of his three thousand and more songs were composed in this period. He was one of the great builders of the golden age of gramphone records in Bengal. Nazrul gave leadership to the first ever largescale commercial production of Bengali music by the gramophone and the film industries. The notable sections of his composition in the decade-long third phase of his life were the modern songs, the devotional songs, songs of the folk musical tradition and raga songs. A new musical genre, typically known as modern, was a significant pheomenon in post-Tagore Bengali music. As entertainment was the basic instinct in this new music, it grew very fast out of the business support from the commercial music producers. Nazrul was one who could spontaneously bring about a combination of entertainment and art. His compositions were always very near the heart of people. He could, therefore, work very intimately to lay the foundation of the entertaining approach to Bengali music. Hundreds of modern songs that he composed built up a strong academic basis for the emerging values in Bengali urban music. Many of Nazrul's immortal love songs belong to this trend.

Kazi Nazrul Islam occupies a unique position in the history of Bengali culture for enriching the streams of Islamic songs and Hindu religious songs. He was the first ever composer of Islamic devotional songs in the Bengali uraban musical stream.

He left behind more than two hundred songs on Islamic themes. Nazrul's success as a composer of Hindu religious songs was also phenomenal. We do not know of any other poet-composer in Bengal who has written Hindu religious songs on such a surprising variety of themes and styles.

He fared well in Vaishnava and Shakta musical traditions and composed nearly six hundred songs glorifying chiefly the goddness Kali and the idols of eternal love--Radha and Krishna.

The trend of composing urban Bengali songs in folk musical models took a significant shape in the works of Nazrul. They were as good as remodeled folk songs. The record and the film industries took a keen interest in them. In most cases Nazrul composed his renowned songs in this genre for films. The songs he composed on the model of jhumur deserve particular mention. Jhumur is an attractive form of ethnic music belonging to the Santhals. None before Nazrul had given it an urban orientation.

Kazi Nazrul Islam achieved towering success as a Bengali raga music composer. He felt a strong urge for raga music which formed the very basis of most of his compositions. He composed songs on all the major Hindustani forms although he was particularly inspired to work on kheyal, thumri and ghazal. His romantic sensibilities got useful support from them. He took an active interest in experimenting with raga music and himself created 17 new ragas. Nazrul took part in two experimental programmes from Calcutta Radio Station which he named as Haramoni (lost gems) and Navaraga malika (wreath of new ragas). These programmes, in which Nazrul would himself sing self-composed songs on unfamiliar ragas and the ragas of his own, were broadcast at regular intervals. This creativity of Nazrul led to some significant consequences, including pioneering of a new genre called Ragpradhan gan or classico-modern Bengali songs.

Nazrul Islam worked with great excellence for total enrichment of Bengali urban music. The post-Tagore musical developments in Bengal follow by and large from his works. The decade that began in 1930 stands historically as a period of transition from the old to the new ways of Bengali urban music.

The origination of free musical tendencies of 'modern' music and the division of labour between a lyricist, a composer and a singer to produce a finished song, improvements in recording mechanism, introduction of background singing for movies, improvements in orchestration and expansion of radio musical programmes are the important features of the emerging musical picture in Bengal. Nazrul stands as a bridge between the old and the new ways of Bengali music. He is also the last of the great Bengali poet-composers.

Understanding the poems of Kazi Nazrul Islam

Dr. Ashraf Siddiqui

The Nobel-laureate poet Rabindranath in one of his poems wrote:

Come, O Poet of the nameless masses

And voiceless minds

Reveal thou all their heart's agonies.

This dead country with a songless atmosphere,

This dreary desert sucked dry by the heat of contempt

Fill thou this with the sap of joy!

Release thou the fountain in its utmost depths!

O master-artist! Let me hear their voice

Who are near and yet far off.

Be though their friends. Let them have

Fame for themselves thro' thy fame.

I will salute thee again and again t..

( Tr. Amiya Chakravarty)

Nazrul surely fulfilled the call of the great poet in many of his poems and songs to mention but of a few like:

Come on O rebellious Hero ! Come on !

Come on O Purifier of Falsehood! Come on ! t

With your unsheathed sharpened sword of Truth,

And the lightning-flash of justice for the deprived all,

t.. In the heart afraid of conscious rise for fight and right.

(Tr. M. Rahman)

Not many- only one poem - The Rebel 'Vidrohi') composed in 1921- in his post 21, was enough to fulfil the wish of the Great Poet who was then beyond to and was also relentlessly calling the youth, the 'purifier of falsehood', in his' Balaka'-poems.

And, Nazrul wrote :

Proclaim, Hero ! proclaim:

Towering high is my head

At the sight of which the Himalayan peak bends low t

Proclaim, Hero ! proclaim: my head is ever held high: t.

I am the sobbing sigh in the widow's heart;

1 am the disconsolate cry in the despondent heart t

I am the Great Rebel, will tire of war and be at peace.

Only then, when the anguished cry of the oppressed

Shall no longer rend the sky and air.

And the tyrant's terrible sword

Will no longer rattle on the field of battle.

I, the Rebel, will tire of war and be at peace only t

(Tr. Ibid.)

Not a matter of joke !

An young man t. not very much known-will write such a poem which, among many others, will agitate the great Tagore himself which will start a great debate among the puritans and which, ultimately, will make Nazrul known to all-at least the scething youths reverberated with the spirit of nationalism.

Such was the beginning but not the end. He wrote:

I am a poet of today, and not a prophet of tomorrow!

Poet or no poet, you may call what you may feelt

I do not care If I survive after the age

There are also many other golden boys

Rabi still burns over our head!

Let us pray: May those who snatch away the morsels of

Thirty-three crores from their mouth.

I will meet with their room in my writings of blood t

( Tr. Ibid.)

Yes, such was Nazrul Islam, popularly known as the Rebel Poet of Bengali literature, if not world literature.

Carlyle once held that behind every book is a man; behind the man is race; and behind the race is the social. natural and historical environments whose influences are reflected on literature. According to Sampson: 'An artist of the first rank accepts tradition and enriches it: an artist of the lower rank accepts tradition and repeats it: an artist of the lowest rank rejects tradition and strives for, originality'.

Nazrul, it is needless to say, in any way, did not reject the tradition, rather he enriches it.

In order to get a better explanation of Nazrul's literature, it is, therefore, necessary to know the environment in the country.

1. Nazrul was born in 1899 and from that time on the country was passing on through various social and political transformations including formation of Indian Congress. proposal for partition of Bengal revolt against the Indigo planters, peasants' agitation and various social and educational reformations initiated by Raja Rammohan Roy and others on the one hand, and Sir Syed Ahmed and others for the Muslim community on the other hand.

2. His birthplace Churulia in West Bengal. a dry and barren reddish-soil-land of coal mines with long-stretched rows of Mahua taught people stoicism and as a result this geographical area. from time immemorial. practiced submission to the Deity in Saktaism, Baishnavism, etc. The area was popular for Sakta, Baishnava, Jhumur, Tuso, Vado, Lato and other indegenous songs also.

3. His uncle Bazle Karim, could read and even write poems in Persian and it is known that he was also the organiser of popular Lato-songs and singing groups in which Nazrul also joined in his teens and earned popularity as a singing performer.

4. On the eastern side of their home was situated the historical fort of Raja Narottam Sinha as witness of many warfares and on the other side was the mazar (shrine) of Haji Pahloan and a pond named Pirpukur. which bore many of the 1cgends of his spiritualism and divinity.

5. Nazrul's father Kazi Fakir Ahmed was the Khidmatgar (caretaker) of the majar and also the Imam (priest) of the adjacent mosque. Nazrul learned Arabic from his saintly father, who was also the teacher in the adjacent Makhtab. Nazrul could read Quran and used to say prayer regularly with his father. At the premature death of his father at his 8, he taught Arabic in the Maktab and also worked as the Muazzin in the mosque.

6. In 1914. Nazrul for the first time had the opportunity to visit and stay in riverine East Bengal where he was brought by Kazi Rafiz Ullah. then a Police Officer in Asansol for further study with his relatives in his native and adjacent village, Trishal-Darirampur. The scenic beauty of riverine East Bengal villages. quite different from that of Churulia with its varied folksongs, Kavi, Jari, Sari etc. must have influenced the budding poet.

7. While Nazrul was only a school student, the Swaraj and Terrorist movements were gaining momentum and all these must have touched and made a mark in his poetic sensibility.

8. Nazrul while a student of class ten only, joined the 49th Bengal Regiment and was posted at Karachi and, as luck would have it, with the able guidance of a Punjabi Moulana, got an easy entrance to the vast land of Persian mystic literature so jealously stored by Rumi, Jami, Hafiz. Omar Khyiam and others. It should be clearly noted that the influence of this Persian Literary tradition got eloquent expressions in his later creation of prose, poems and songs, as well as in dictions.

9. In 1919, after the conclusion of the First Great War, the people of this sub-continent aspired that they will now be granted Swaraj as agreed upon for participating in the war. But. instead. various repressive measures including the brutal murders in Jaliwanwalabag and Gujranwala took place. Hundreds and thousands of nationalists, including freedom fighters were put in the jail and repressions continued including capital punishments for fighters like Abhiram and Khudiram, to mention but a few.

10. On the other hand, Khilafat Movement 'by no less Muslim leaders like Mohammad Ali, Shaukat Ali and others gained easy support from the Muslim community which till that time were working hand-in-hand with the Congress leaders was much aclaimed by Nazrul at least for an united effort as will be seen in his poems, songs and essays, fictions and novels eulogising the tradition of both Hindus and Muslims.

11. The country, it is needless to say. was waiting for a poet who will display exuberating feelings of the country, both Hindu and Muslims and in Nazrul they discovered it, Nazrul wrote poems and songs inspiring the youths, students, the peasants, fishermen, labourers, the women and, in short, the suffering humanity all over the world. He wrote and wrote, He sang and sang:

'Come on, rebellious Hero; Come on !

Purifier of Falsehoods and self-strong sage! Come on !

t tDeclare to the world, O Lion of Man !

The message of I Am:

Your real Swaraj or self-government t

Sing the song of youth

Possessed of glittering pride and sharpened sword.

And desperately out, far and wide,

in search of impossible finds .. .'

I sing the songs of those

Who have brought to the hand of earth the

Charter of crops.'

'Allah is my Lord, no fear for me,

Mohammed is my prophet, of whom the

world is full in praiset..'

'We are the strength, we are the force.

The band of students that we are t.'

'Those repressed have now raised their head, tt..

The prisoners have torn the fetters and

broken the prison walls t

Now he has learnt to like and love t

Hail to the new rise for the new destination t'

( Tr. Ibid.)

Did Nazrul Islam to repeat, fulfil the aspiration of the great poet Tagore, who wrote:

'O Master-Artist! Let me hear their voice,

Who are near and yet far off.

Be thou their friend. Let them have

Fame for themselves thro' thy fame

I will salute thee again and again t

( Tr. Amiya Chakravarty)

To answer this, one is to read Nazrul carefully not once, but again and again.

Poem

Wives of a few bureaucrats

Abdul Gani Hazari

We are wives of a few bureaucrats.

O lord, we turn our faces towards you,

give us relief we are distressed at rest.

Our husbands dived deep into the files

(They know well

what they'll fish out of 'em)

We are lost in family planning.

That time's passed overcoming us.

We are wives of a few bureaucrats.

We are on the brink of high thinking

from the morning to the evening,

for enjoying colourless pages of fashion

periodicals, looking at Cine Magazine's

nude pictures of health and beauty

that's highly shivering sexy appeal.

On fat's enclosure

the valley of our waists

with rising obese,

widening duality of chins,

worried on fattened breasts;

O lord, we are gasping for breath

on fatty mausoleum.

We are wives of a few bureaucrats.

Our coffer is rich.

Surplus pocket money's kept

under pillow folders;

Helencartis, Anne French milk, Astringent

Deodorant, Hand lotion, Revlon,

Christian dear, and Rubin stein.

Of course, these are extra gifts

to make-up for the deficit

of old and warm love.

The husbands are always proud

of salutes of their orderlies;

opposing others' promotions,

petitions disallowed

and some valued signatures.

Even after returning to residence

zealous for friend's promotion,

loss and profit of pseudonymous business,

telephone, and telephone

and telephone thereafter.

Our Revlon on lips to make up

the foundation of the face,

putting on small round paint

in the center of the forehead,

now withered away along

with the afternoon invitation.

O lord, now the thought of

the second person makes us

indifferent; old lovers,

young one's aunts,

the mothers of the subordinates;

the grandmothers in sister's family,

and the withered away afternoon;

looking at the papers

published in London

of Maggie's love;

Jacqueline's eulogy, coquetry

of Liz Taylor;

measurement of B-B's breasts;

temptation of Lola,

and the suicide of Marlene;

suicide and suicide

that withered away

afternoon invitation.

So O lord, our nocturnal life

seems exhausted and faded away;

the moon beyond the window is bloodless;

copulated body is inert;

the husband is snoring,

sleepless night and tranquilizer;

O lord, there's no other alternatives

but to turn our faces to you,

give us any job-

looking glass in the vanity bag,

foundation and gala-color

and social work;

extravagant use of kindergarten;

reserved our front seats at the ladies' club

or opening of the Children's home

on ex-officio husband's behalf-

We are wives of a few bureaucrats,

O lord, give us a job,

so that we throw ourselves in that. *

*This is the UNESCO-prize winning poem of Abdul Gani Hazari (1921-1976).

Translated by M. Mizanur Rahman