ANUPAM PAUL: A Stupendous Harmonica Lover

Anupam Paul (Anupam Da), a renowned Harmonica player not only in West Bengal but also in India was born on 27^th May 1953. Anupam Da was very close to his guru- Shri Milon Gupta (Milon Da), the celebrated harmonicist in India for a long corridor of 25 years (1970-1995) and admired him as his friend, philosopher and guide.

The beginning- Search for a Guru

 Milon da and Anupam da were performing in the year 1981 at 
Tumluk, Midnapore district, West Bengal (from left Soumitra chatterjee(famous Indian guitarist, Anupam da, Milon da and Milon Deb (accordian).

Love for harmonica started at the age of 16 when Anupam Da first listened to the harmonica track of the song- ‘Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil’ played by Milon Da. In 1970, during his college time, Anupam Da was searching the venue at Kolkata where Milon Da usually took harmonica classes. At that time, Milon Da was very busy in Mumbai and occasionally came to his rental house at Kolkata. One day Anupam Da came to know from his friend that Milon Da will come to perform at ‘Lake Commercial College, Kolkata’ for their annual programme. Anupam Da went there and discovered that Milon Da’s harmonica teaching school was at Golpark, Kolkata. Anupam Da went there and met Milon Da and his learning of harmonica started thereon with the fees of Rs. 10/= only.

Anupam Da narrates an anecdote about Milon Da that once when he accompanied Milon Da for his recording he (Milon Da) was told to change the key of the song. Though Milon Da had prepared the song in a different key, he recorded it in the key he was told in the very first take. This had left Anupam Da amused and he was impressed.

Contemporary Harmonica Lovers:

During his days as a harmonica learner, a large numbers of students of Milon Da like Kajal Chakraborty, Premangshu Chatterjee, Bhaskar Chowdhury, Satyanarayan Chakraborty were contemporaries of Anupam Da. HaLoH member Shri B. Vinayak from Hyderabad had met Anupam Da during his stay at Kolkata when he went there for learning the techniques of harmonica from Milon Da.

Television performance, Releasing of Albums and Live Performances:

Anupam Da performed a Bengali ‘Kirtan’ (Ami Sukhero Lageea) on television in the year 1975. Milon Da was very much cordial with Anupam Da and occasionally they went together to the studio whenever Milon Da had any recording assignments. Their relationship lasted till Milon Da’s death (1995). In 1995, with his harmonica, Anupam Da recorded his first cassette “Chena Sur Achena Dhbani” on Bengali Folk Song using the same style as Milon Da with the famous music arranger V. Balsara. Again, in 2004, HMV Sa Re Ga Ma released an album- “Pehli Pehli Baar Hai” on Hindi Film Songs in Harmonica performed by Anupam Da. Both the albums were marketed well.

Role as a Harmonica Teacher:

Since 1980, Anupam Da started to teach his students harmonica skills once in a week except Sunday as his engagement was fixed with Milon Da on Sundays. In his career, wherever he resided, he went to Milon Da as a regular student. His playing style, technique and overall performance is like Milon Da. Till date he is engaged in conducting harmonica classes, preparation of notations of new generation songs, repairing of harmonica reeds etc. He is very much cordial with his students.

Views on Harmonica playing:

Anupam Da’s view in playing Harmonica is – One can play any song starting from any notation (sa/re/ga/ma) irrespective of its original scale but it must be sweet to hear and one must be satisfied with one’s playing without breathing problems. According to him, the beauty of the song should remain the same and he advocates the reversing of slider for getting the desired effects on the harmonica. According to him the final output should be good and this is what matters. The audience is least concerned about which key of harmonica was used to play the song. They are just concerned with the final presentation of the song. He possesses harmonicas like Hohner Super Chromonica 270, Hohner CX-12 and Suzuki SCX-48. His all-time favourite is Hohner Super Chromonica 270.

Anupam Da now resides at Kalyani, West Bengal with his family and will soon retire from his bank job. We pray for his long life.

Inputs for this article were given by Dr Prasanta Kumar Bandyopadhya.

Milon da’s son says “HaLoH Hyderabad”

Recently, HaLoH members G Raj Kumar, B Vinayak and Ramana met Shri Sanjoy Gupta, The son of harmonica legend Milon da.

It was a brief rendezvous at hotel Mercure in Hyderabad. Mr sanjoy Gupta is a free lance Cost Accountant and is settled in Mumbai.

Mr Sanjoy Gupta doesn’t play the harmonica. Never the less, He has carefully preserved almost 80% of the collection of rare EPs,LPs,Audio cassettes and harmonicas of his father. His son (Milon da’s grandson) Master Shubhayu Gupta is a music lover and has cleared his 6^th grade theory for keyboard from Trinity College of Music, London. He will be appearing for his practical examination this year.

Mr Sanjoy Gupta had discussed about harmonica, And his father’s close friends and associates settled across the globe including Karun da ( Shri Karun Chakraborty) who’s article has already been published on this blog.

http://harmonicahyderabad.blogspot.com/2011/02/rendezvous-with-milon-das-associate.html

It was really interesting for those present there in the meeting to learn about the close associates of Milon da.

Harmonica our passion!

Rendezvous with Milon da’s associate- Shri Karun Chakraborty

Our team member Ramana along with harmonica lover Rameshwaram Bharadwaj visited Chandan Nagar, Kolkata to meet Milon da’s close associate and one of the greatest harmonica players of India. Karun Chakraborty, a resident of Chandan Nagar (West Bengal), a painter by profession, has been following his hobby of playing the harmonica for more than 50 years now. He is a member of SPAH(Society for Preservation and Advancement of Harmonica), headquartered in Michigan (USA) and was invited to perform everyday in the week long 37^th Annual convention held in Romulus, Michigan in August 2000. The renowned harmonicist of Kolkata , Late Milon Gupta was his teacher and guide.In Milon da’s absence,He used to train his(Milon Da’s) students.

Mr Chakraborty was awarded the Gold Medal in the West Bengal Youth Festival in 1965 and has been performing at many venues in India as well as overseas all through. In the US, he has performed at University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 1997 for the "Fifty years of Indian Independence Celebrations", at Hartford, Connecticut and at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 1988. In the same year, he was invited to become an honorary member of the Golden Age Harmonicats of Chicopee, Massachusetts which had been founded by the late Sam Sheppard, and played at several functions all over the New England area as part of the group. He is equally skilled in playing Indian tunes as well as Western tunes. Very painful to share with you- now he is visually handicapped due to macular degeneration since his early 30s. However, this hasn't discouraged him to play the harmonica which he feels is his life.
Mr Karun’s better half- Smt Dipali Chakraborty, HOD Dept of English,Shillong College(Retired), also a music lover always accompanies Mr Karun Chakraborty at all the events. She has special interest in Rabindra Sangeet and has translated around 50 songs to English and those were published in Kolkata local magazine- "KRISTI".

The couple extended a warm welcome to our team members and this meeting was one of their most memorable meetings.

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