Friday, September 19, 2014

Death of Feroza Begum was a big blow to World of Nazrulgeeti.


Death of Feroza Begum was a big blow to World of Nazrulgeeti. Famous singer Feroza Begum died on 9th September, 2014 at the age of 84 years. She had been survived by 3 children. She was the wife of famous singer and composer Kamal Dasgupta. Between 1954 to 1967 she lived in Kolkata. After that she permanently went to Dhaka in Bangladesh. She was one of the great Nazrul geeti singers after Dhirendra Nath Dey and Manobendra Mukherjee. Some of her most famous nazrulgeeti included “shukhna pata nupur paye”, “ami bono phul go”, “gobhir nisithe ghum bhenge jai”, “joto ful toto bhul”, to name a few. Very significantly she was very close to and met great poet and composer Kazi Nazrul Islam who was also called Bidrohi Kabi. She met him at the age of 10 years. Kazi Najrul Islam’s songs are called Nazrul geeti. Many Bengali singers had sung eminent songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam. The list is very long and some of the great names include Jaganmay Mitra, Dhiren Mitra, Manabendra Mukherjee, Satinath Mukherjee, Mohammad Rafi, Anup Ghoshal, Kamal Dasgupta, Akhibandhu Ghosh, Ajay Chakravarty and others. Most of the songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam are very classical in nature. It is very difficult to sing those songs unless the singers have special skills. Feroza Begum revived Nazrul Geeti both in Kolkata and in Bangladesh at a time in the 1980s when the craze for Nazrul Geeti was drying up. She had given adequate expression to the words of Kazi Nazrul Islam. Her songs should be preserved and restored.

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