Salil Chowdhury’s family to organise all India music festival

An all India music festival to promote different genres of Indian music propagated by noted composer-lyricist Salil Chowdhury will be organised by 2018, his singer daughter Antara Chowdhury has said.

“The Salil Chowdhury Foundation of Music is actively working on a proposal to organise an all India music festival where leading musicians from Hindi playback to Indian classical, as well as instrumentalists, representing Indian classical and western, will participate and popularise the rich tapestry of Indian music among youngsters,” Antara said.

The foundation will also urge Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to organise a separate ‘Salil Utsav’ at the government level.

“This Salil Utsav, which can be held at the regional level, will bring under focus my father’s plays, writings, directorial works besides music and his association with Gananatya Sangha. I am hopeful our CM, who always patronises Bengal’s cultural heritage, will do something,” she said.

Antara pointed out it was difficult to confine Salil Chowdhury or assess his contribution in one field of art, as he effortlessly shifted from Hindi playback to Choir music, from non-film songs to other compositions in several languages and excelled in different fields.

“We have plans to move the Union I & B ministry to hold the conference show in Mumbai in 2-years time, by 2018,” she said.

Chowdhury’s wife Sabita, herself a prominent singer, said popularising his works among the present generation can’t be individually done by the foundation which is doing it’s bit and will continue to do it like organising an exhibition on the singer’s death anniversary recently. Salil Chowdhury passed away in 1995 at the age of 72.

Regretting that the present generation is hooked to peppy numbers, Sabita said, “Why are beautiful songs like ‘O Sona Bang’ and ‘Aay Re Chhute Aay Pujor Gandho Esechhe’ not introduced to children in reality shows any more and they are not made aware of Indian culture. “Why are children forced to gyrate to numbers with jhatkas!! Is that our culture?”

The foundation will also do annual honours for ‘Living Legends’ and ‘Signature Contribution’ in the world of music,” Rupak Saha, one of the key foundation members, said.