Pankaj Mullick

He was born in Calcutta in 1905 and learned music from Durgadas Bandyopadhyay and, for Rabindrasangeet, from Dinendranath Tagore, the poet's grand-nephew. He began recording in 1926 and joined the Indian Broadcasting Company when it opened in Calcutta in 1927; his radio programme teaching Tagore songs, Sangeet Shikshar Asar, ran for nearly fifty years, and his voice opened the Mahalaya-morning Mahishasuramardini every year from the 1930s.

At New Theatres he composed and sang for Hindi and Bengali films — Mukti (1937), in which he also acted, Dhoop Chhaon, Doctor (1941), Nartaki, Kapal Kundala — and composed for K.L. Saigal in Dushman, Zindagi and My Sister. He set Tagore's poems to music for film with the poet's permission, something no one else had been allowed, and used orchestral music under dialogue in a way that was new to Indian cinema.

He received the Padma Shri in 1970 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1972, and died in Calcutta in February 1978. His Hindi songs are fewer than his Bengali, but Piya Milan Ko Jana, Yeh Raatein Yeh Mausam and Aayi Bahar Aaj are still played.

Pankaj Mullick's was a deep, measured baritone of the drawing-room kind, more recital than film song, with clear Bengali diction and a dignified, slightly formal delivery. It was the voice of the educated bhadralok of the 1930s, and through radio it became the voice in which two generations learned to sing Tagore.