Dr.  Amlan Dasgupta Speaks :

Text version:

It must have been in 1974 or 75, when I first heard Vismadev Chattppadhyaya sing. I had heard him sing in gramophone records, we had some of his gramophone records at home, We heard long  kind of stories about him. My teacher Sri Amarnath Dey had organized a programme at Balygunj Sikhsha Sadan, where he came. Always I was told that he was a very unpredictable singer that mean that mean  what will he sing, or whether he would sing anything at all or just go away, no one could predict it at all. But he came and he sat quietly and he asked for lot of tea, I remember I went him caught the tea, and I think it was also ‘Paan’ that he requires so I was put in charge for looking after him for these things.  There was Keramat Sahab, and there was Kesto Babu  on the  Harmonium. So he was sitting there and then he, I think he was playing the Harmonium himself. I also remember small thing when he took Keramat Khan Sahab’s Tabla and played then with Buddhadeb Dasgupta, So there were all kind of thinks that was happening.  Then he went on to the stage and sang ‘Alap’  in ‘Malkauns’ and that is I think the   really marvelous part of that programme. After that he sang ‘Khayal’ in ‘Malkauns’ then he sang ‘Drut khayal’ ‘Malkauns’, ‘Vilambit ‘ and ‘Drut’,  and  then he sang ‘Bhajan’, and stopped.  After which I think people in the audience, whom he knew, you mean lot of people, there were lot of people there, lot of music lovers, who asked him to go on and say that you can’t leave us like this, and then he pulled the Harmonium towards himself and must have sang some eight or ten ‘Ragpradhan’ songs, That was really marvelous, really marvelous. Went on far beyond the time which we were booked the hall for, we were all standing there, pleading with the hall authorities to allow him to go on singing, saying something is happening which is so marvelous that,  it will be really a great pity to, tragedy to stop it. So the thing is that the ‘Malkauns  Alap’  I have never heard him before, after I heard him three times  perhaps afterwards in ‘ Bango Sanskriti Sanmelam’ and also the programme  that we have organized an year after. But he did’nt sing an  ‘Alap’ , I never heard any recording later when I was sort of tried  to look for the recordings of Vishmababu, I found a couple of ‘Vilambit Khayal’s  but no live or recorded ‘Alap’. But that he had training and this was something which was remarked upon by all the artists present there was something that I thought was really marvelous because evidently he was talking about a kind of ‘Talim’ about on which we knew almost nothing.

Verbatim by Rajeswary Ganguly Banerjee

Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University.