The New Nation - Internet Edition

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.