Manna Dey was a popular singer of film and other songs in Hindi and
Bengali in India.
When there were several
other titans of Hindi film music in 1950s and 60s,
Manney Dey held his own niche. He was born in 1919 in a music loving family and
was originally named Probodh Chandra Dey. Growing up in Calcutta
city of India he, like all
people from Bengal, keenly played football and
practiced wrestling. However, his first love was music. He took lessons in
music from his uncle K.C.Dey, a renowned singer of those times. Soon he got opportunities to sing for Bengali
films. However, he wanted to make it big in India’s
film-world as such in 1942 he moved to Bombay,
the centre of all Hindi film related activities.
Manna Dey began to assist the ruling film music directors of those
times like Anl Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Shyam Sundar, S.D.Burman and
C.Ramchandra. However, he felt that to make a real mark in the world of music, he
should have a firm grounding in Hindustani classical music. He became a disciple
of Ustad Aman Ali Khan by impressing him with his voice and
singing. Hailing
from Bengal Manna Dey was well versed in Rabindra Sangeet which he began to
teach. One of his students was Sulochana whom he later married. They had a
happy married life and two daughters, who had talents for singing but
voluntarily took other avocations.
In this
autobiography Manna Dey recounts his experience of singing for
various leading actors like Raj Kapoor and comedian Mehmood and reveals several
interesting tit bits concerning them. However, the writer is doesn’t become
frank but remains careful while writing about his co-singers. This book chronologically
lists thousands of Manna Dey’s songs and thereby proves useful to researchers
and Manna Dey’s fans.