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- Dr. Gobindo Gopal Mukhopadhyay Dilip Kumar Roy is a landmark in the evolution of Bengali music. Son of a great Bengali composer, Dwijendra Lal Roy (D.L.Roy), who was a contemporary of Tagore, Dilip Kumar imbibed a passion for music from his very boyhood. In his youth, this passion drove him from one corner of India to the other in search of great masters (Ustads) who could initiate him into the intricacies of Classical music. But his inborn genius did not allow him to move along the beaten track. He early evolved a style of his own, which marked him out as a composer of rare eminence and his way of rendering Bengali songs was quite a new phenomenon in Bengali music. In it is blended the niceties of North Indian raga music with the lilt of Kirtan, which is Bengali's own. In some of his compositions, Roy has produced many innovations from Western music, in which too he had a wide training during his stay in Europe. Being a gifted poet himself, it has also been possible for him to achieve a rare harmony between the sound and the sense, which makes his compositions so richly expressive. In the late twenties, therefore, his advent heralded a new era in Bengali music. A close collaborator of Atulprasad, another celebrated composer of modern Bengali songs, Roy contributed not a little to popularize his songs as well as those of Nazrul, who was his distinguished contemporary. No less was his contribution to the re-awakening of the national spirit during the freedom movement of India by his powerful and inimitable rendering of the patriotic songs of D.L. Roy. But being a born mystic, his main note has always been the devotional, which became deepened and enriched by his long contact with Sri Aurobindo, his spiritual guide. To him music now turned into a mode of adoration of the Divine and this had drawn him to the bhajans, India's rich heritage of devotional music, of which he happens to be one of the rarest exponents. His rendering of pieces from Mirabai, Kabir, Tulsidas and others has a charm all its own. He initiated the celebrated exponent of South Indian music, Smt. M.S. Subbulakshmi in this North Indian type of bhajans, which have been widely acclaimed all over the world. His soul-stirring songs captivated the hearts of foreign luminaries like Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russel, Aldous Huxley and a host of other dignitaries in the field of arts and literature who, though deprived of understanding the sense of his songs, were enraptured by the divinely melodious sound alone, which communicated something unearthly to their hearts. Though it is now a quarter of a century since he passed away, his golden voice still vibrates in every human heart when played on the discs or tapes, transporting all to a region beyond this sordid earth and uplifting to a blissful region of divine delight. | |||||||||
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