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Sandhya Mukherjee
Sandhya Mukherjee (right) and Nupurchhanda Ghosh (left) in September 2014
Background information
Birth name	Sandhya Mukherjee
Born	(1931-10-04)4 October 1931 Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died	15 February 2022(2022-02-15) (aged 90) Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Genres	Playback singing
Occupation(s)	Singer, composer

Sandhya Mukherjee (also spelled Mukhopadhyay; 4 October 1931 – 15 February 2022) was an Indian playback singer and musician, specialising in Bengali music. She received Banga Bibhushan, the highest civilian honour of the Indian state of West Bengal in 2011. She also won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for her songs in the films Jay Jayanti and Nishi Padma in the year 1970.

Early life

Mukherjee was born in Dhakuria, Calcutta, on 4 October 1931 to Narendranath Mukherjee, a railway official, and Hemprova Devi. She was the youngest of six children. Her grandfather was a police officer, and the family had lived in Dhakuria since 1911.

Training and career

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Sandhya started her music training under the direction of Pandit Santosh Kumar Basu, Professor A T Kannan, and Professor Chinmoy Lahiri. However, her guru was Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, followed by his son Ustad Munavvar Ali Khan, under whom she mastered Indian classical music. According to Manorma Sharma, "Sandhya has been able to maintain her popularity as a classical vocalist even after acquiring the gloss and the glow of playback singing ..."

Though classically trained, the bulk of her work consists of Bengali modern songs. She began her career in Mumbai singing Hindi songs, starting with a song in the film Taarana in 1950. She sang, as a playback singer, in 17 Hindi films. She decided to come back to and settle in her home city Kolkata in 1952 due to personal reasons. She married Bengali poet Shyamal Gupta in 1966. Gupta went on to write the lyrics for many of her songs.

Her best known collaboration is arguably with the Bengali singer Hemanta Mukherjee with whom she sang numerous duets, primarily as playback for Bengali films. Hemanta and Sandhya became known as the voices behind the pairings of the Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar and his numerous heroines, most notably being the actress Suchitra Sen, whose singing voice she became. Besides Hemanta Mukherjee's compositions, her largest body of work is with Robin Chattopadhyay and Nachiketa Ghosh.

During the Bangladesh Liberation War she joined the mass movement among Indian Bengali artistes to raise money for the millions of refugees who had poured into Kolkata and West Bengal to escape the fighting, and to raise global awareness for the cause of Bangladesh. She assisted Bangladeshi musician Samar Das as he set up the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the clandestine radio station broadcasting to Bangladesh and recorded several patriotic songs for him. On the occasion of the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the imprisoned leader of the new country of Bangladesh, she released a song Bangabandhu Tumi Phirey Ele. She later became one of the first foreign artists to visit Dhaka, performing at an open-air concert in Paltan Maidan in Dhaka to celebrate the first Ekushey February after Bangladeshi independence in 1971.

On 26 January 2022, on the Republic Day and a few days before affecting COVID-19, Mukherjee was awarded the Padma Shri for her performance in music. However, she refused the award by telling it "disparaging and degrading".

Songs

Awards

• Padma Shri in 2022 (refused)
• Banga Bibhushan in 2011.
• Bharat Nirman Award - Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.
• National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for the songs "Amader Chuti Chuti" Jay Jayanti and "Ore Sakol Sona Molin Holo" Nishi Padma in 1971.
• BFJA Awards - Best Female Playback Singer for Sandhya Deeper Sikha in 1965.
• BFJA Awards - Best Female Playback Singer for Jay Jayanti in 1972.

References

1. ananda, abp (15 February 2022). "প্রয়াত সন্ধ্যা মুখোপাধ্যায়". bengali.abplive.com (in Bengali). Retrieved 15 February 2022.
2. "In Loving Memory of Sandhya Mukhopadhyay: The late Geetashree Sandhya Mukherjee". 15 February 2022. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
3. State honours nine with Banga-Vibhushan. The Times of India.
4. "18th National Film Awards" (PDF). Directorate of Film Festivals. Retrieved 26 September 2011.
5. Saleheen, Mesbah-us- (6 February 2015). "A singer with a transparent voice". The daily oberver. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
6. ^ Sharma, Manorma (2006). Tradition of Hindustani Music. APH Publishing House. pp. 119–120. ISBN 9788176489997. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
7. Express, The Financial. "Sandhya Mukherjee hospitalised with Covid". The Financial Express. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
8. "Meet Sandhya Mukherjee, the 90-year-old Bengali music legend who turned down Padma Shri". The Indian Express. 27 January 2022. Retrieved 28 January 2022.

External links

Sandhya Mukherjee at IMDb

• Living people
• Bengali musicians
• Bengali singers
• Indian women playback singers
• Bengali playback singers
• Singers from Kolkata
• Bollywood playback singers
• 1931 births
• Best Female Playback Singer National Film Award winners
• Women musicians from West Bengal
• 20th-century Indian women singers
• 20th-century Indian singers
• Best Female Singer Bachsas Award winners