Amadeus : From Star Trek To Kolkata's Samadipta!

Choyon's Log : today is July 13th.A bright summer eve, all the windows open, warm breeze flowing through.In Vannes at our home son Mattis-Joti and I were watching Star Trek : Next Generation : Where No One Has Gone Before.The alien traveller who is speed personified told Captain Picard about his fascination for Mozart.Bengali girl Samadipta Mukherjee from Kolkata has the same fascination for the immortal maestro who was burried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

Growing up in a Bengali family, music happened for Mukherjee by default.Her music aficionado father exposed her to Hindustani classical music, ghazals, Najrulgeeti, and old Bengali and Hindi film songs at home.

“Like it is for most Bengali children, sur and taal have been a part of life since childhood,” Samadipta said to The Indian Express.She is pursuing a masters in music from the University of Calcutta. She learned the basics of Indian classical music from Pt Kalyan Chattopadhyay.Her interest in western classical music happened a few years ago after she attended a workshop by popular Bengali composer Debojyoti Mishra . “He is the master who sowed the seed within me. He would tell me to listen to the works of Mozart and Beethoven, which I did,” She has received a lot of requests on social media to put up something new.On singing Mozart’s famed Symphony No 40 using the Indian notation (sargam) phraseology she became a social media sensation and finding appreciation from the likes of  Lata Mangeshkar.Lata Shared Samadipta's Mozart sargam and twitted her blessings as well.
On Getting blessings from Lata? Samadipta wrote, ''I worship her. It has been my dream to meet her. When I saw her post, I was almost shivering,”She is not a full-time musician but does stage performances. She told Indian Express,“In my family, I am the first person to have taken music seriously,”. Her mother is a teacher while her father works in the private sector.

There is another connection to Lata and Mozart via sixties Bengali composer Salil Chowdhury.In Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s film, Chhaya (1961), Salil Chaudhury presented a style different from those in Bollywood at the time.The phrasing was breezy with rhythm variation in place alongside experimentations with major and minor scales and a sense of earthy, somewhat indigenous impression to the melody.The warm woodwinds and swelling strings lead us into this piece – Itna na mujhse tu pyaar badhaa, ke main ik baadal awaara – with actors Asha Parekh and Sunil Dutt in the frame.
 

Salil Chaudhury, in this song, was playing with parts of the first movement of The Great G Minor Symphony, better known as Symphony No. 40 and popular world over.Created by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during the Viennese Classical Period – roughly about100 years between the mid-18th and the mid-19th century – Chaudhury’s song is how a lot of people in India have had this significant symphony’s underlying notes ingrained in their heads and hearts.

Begining of the post I mentioned the alien traveller talking about Mozart in Star Trek: Next Generation captured my attention.I started watching Star Trek in my early childhood at seventies Dhaka and never grew out of it.Now watching it with my son.Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Salil Chow, Lata Mangeshkar, Samadipta, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Mattis-Joti, Dhaka, Mumbai, Kolkata, Brittany, Vienna and I are all related through the immortal music of Mozart which will keep travelling beyond cultural frontiers through the slingshots of time warp!Who could forget that great biopic of Mozart by Milos Forman where the hedonistic Amadeus bursting out in laughter and partying to his hearts content!Engage!

Choyon Khairul Habib
14/07/20
Brittany, France

Source : Wikipedia, twitter, youtube, Amadeus by Milos Forman, Star Trek, Indian Express