Remembering Satinath Mukerjee

Satinath Mukherjee grew up in a musical family where his paternal grandfather Raibahadur Ramchandra Mukherjee, a renowned violin player, had made a deep impression on him. Even as a child growing up in Lucknow, he used to attend performances in Indian classical music. He carried out his training in classical music as well as his regular studies side by side with great devotion. As a matter of fact he completed Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction, a great accomplishment by any standards. His first gramophone record was a Nazrul song with the title "Bhul kore jodi bhalobese thaki". Because of his strong background in classical musical, not only he composed music for Shyamal Mitra and Lata Mangeshkar, but also for several other singers. He composed the music for two of Hemanta Mukherjee's immortal songs released in 1956 (i.e., "Aar kato rahibo shudu patho cheye" and "Tomar amar karo mukhe katha nai"). As a matter of fact he composed the music of the song "Pashaner buke likhona amar nam" (lyricist: Pabitra Mitra) that brought him to the fore front of Bengali singers of the fifties.

Satinath Mukherjee was connected to Bangladesh through marriage with another legendary singer Utpala Sen, a Dhaka native of the forties. Utapala Sen was one of the inaugural singers of Dhaka Radio station in 1946. Her family used to live in old Dhaka near Armanitola High School. Her father continued to live there even in the sixties. The partition of Bengal in 1947 had left a deep scar in the cultural history of Bengal as talented academicians, writers, musicians and singers had to move across the border.