Legendary Bengali singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay passes away at 90

Legendary Bengali singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay passed away in Kolkata on Tuesday after a brief illness. She was 90. Sandhya Mukhopadhyay took Bengali songs to new heights, whether it was playback singing for films or songs released during Durga Puja, which emerged as a new genre and labelled modern Bengali songs (“adhunik gaan”).

The singer took her first music lessons from her parents Narendranath Mukhopadhyay and mother Hemaprabha Devi. A trained classical singer who with equal ease took to different forms of singing — from playback to folk songs, Rabindra Sangeet and bhajans — trained under Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and was later associated with legends like Begum Akhtar.

Sandhya Mukherjee’s first record was in 1945 and her first album of Durga Puja songs was released in 1948. Soon, offers for playback singing in Bengali films started coming in. Her first playback singing was for film Samapika released in 1948.  In 1971, she bagged the national award for best female playback singer for songs in the films Jai Jayanti ( 1970) and Nishi Padma ( 1970).