Bengali Drama and Nazrul’s Songs: A Review/ বাংলা নাটক ও নজরুলের গান : একটি পর্যালোচনা

Abstract

Since birth, Nazrul Islam has been a teacher of the Maktab, muezzim, a poet of the Leto group, an employee of a bread shop, a soilder-lover-rebel-fakir and sometimes a saint – with a life made up of such Dramatic elements, Nazrul started writing a play as a poet of the Leto group a series of play whoe dramatic value is insignificant, but it cannot be denied that it was the poet’s first attempt. However, when the poet’s real literary life began in 1919, it initially revolved around stories, poems, songs and novels. After a short while, he also began to lean towards plays. Nazrul Islam’s first play was written while in the Baharampur Jail for the Madaripur Charandal at the request of Purnachandra Das and Narendranarayan Chakraborty. Although this play cannot be found anymore, it is Known that the famous song ‘Jater Name Bajjati Sab’ is form this play. Since then, he has also been associated with Bengali stage drama. And in this work, on the one hand, he has composed lyrics and composed music for several plays by others, especially Manmatha Roy and Sachindranath Sengupta, as well as Sudhindranath Raha, Debendranath Raha, Birendrakrishna Bhadra and any others, and on the other hand, he himself has written several plays including ‘Aleya’ and ‘Madhumala’ and composed songs and music to them, cementing his place in the world of Bengali stage Drama. However, his first song outside his own plas was for the drama version of Shaktipada singha of Sharatchandra’s novel ‘charitrahin’, although the lyrics and exact date of that song have not been found. In this case, it was the songs of Sachindranath Sengupta’s play ‘Raktakamal’ that completely connected Nazrul Islam to the stage, and after that, Nazrul rose to the top of fame by composing and composing songs for Manmatha Roy’s play ‘Mahua’. In the terms of creating melodies, the poet has also experimented with various songs for theatre. Just as he created new melodies by mixing different ragas, he has also shown innovationin using folk melodies. Just he has created songs like ‘O Bhai Amara Nao Zatri Na Loy’ by mixing tha Bhatiali and sampan melodies of East Bengal, he has also created song like ‘Ke Dilo Khonpate Dhutura Phul Lo’ in the tunes of the Jhumur style of West Bengal. And because he is such a great music creator, even though the metaphorical and symbolic plays he has written himself has been successful as plays even though they are lyrical.