Salil
Chowdhury was one of the greatest musical talents India
ever had. He was a man of many talents. He was not only
an outstanding composer, an accomplished and gifted
arranger, poet and writer but above all an intellectual.
A master multi-instrumentalist, he played excellent
flute, violin and piano with a deep and well-studied
understanding of several other instruments as is evident
from their creative use in his music.
In 1952 Salil Chowdhury came to Bombay to compose the
music for Do Beegha Zameen. This was the Hindi version
of the successful Bengali Film 'Rikshawaala' . The story
of 'Rikshawaala' was written by him and the music was
composed by him. It was a tremendous success and so
was 'Do Bigha Zameen'. Since then he had composed for
over 75 Hindi Films, around 26 Malayalam Films and several
Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, Assameese
and Oriya Films.
In a way, Salilda is the second Bengali composer who
has practically neglected the talents of Geeta Dutt
(the first one being maestro Anil Biswas). Between his
debut year 1952 to 1970, he has composed music for about
35 odd Hindi Films and we |