K.C. Dey
Krishna Chandra Dey lost his sight as a boy and became one of the most respected singers of 1930s Calcutta — on the stage, on records, and in the New Theatres films, where he played and sang the blind beggar, the sadhu and the wandering minstrel. He taught his nephew Manna Dey and, for a time, S.D. Burman.
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Life
He was born in Calcutta in 1893 and lost his sight at about thirteen after an illness. He trained in classical music and in kirtan, sang on the Calcutta stage from the 1920s, and recorded for HMV. With the coming of sound he joined New Theatres, acting and singing in Chandidas (1934), Devdas (1935), Puran Bhagat, Dhoop Chhaon and others; his songs were usually the devotional and philosophical interludes that the films of that studio favoured.
In 1942 he moved to Bombay and composed for a few films — Tamanna (1943) among them, in which his nephew Manna Dey sang his first song — but he found the Bombay industry uncongenial and returned to Calcutta in 1946, where he sang on radio and records until his death in 1962.
His Hindi recordings are few and old, but Teri Gathri Mein Laga Chor from Dhoop Chhaon and Baba Man Ki Aankhen Khol from Dhoop Chhaon are the two usually cited; his real legacy is through his pupils.
The voice
K.C. Dey sang in a high, slightly nasal tenor, with the open-throated projection of the kirtan singer and a plaintive quality that the blind-minstrel roles called for. It is the sound of pre-microphone Calcutta, and it survives mostly in the New Theatres films.
Composers
- R.C. Boral
- Pankaj Mullick
- K.C. Dey
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