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One day, in Barisal, which falls in present day Bangaladesh,
a nine year old boy frolicking in the water spied a stick.
Like any other little boy he dived in to retrieve it.
It turned out to be a hollow flute.
Children ordinarily lose interest after the first few experiments with new objects.
However, this boy continued his experiments with the flute for the next forty years,
on the way becoming the great Pandit Panna Lal Ghosh.
Pannalal, a child prodigy, was named Amulya Jyoti by his parents.
His grandfather, Shri Hari Kumar Ghosh inculcated in him a love for
bansuri (bamboo flute) and for music in general.
Young Panna also learnt to play the sitar from his father Shri Akshay Kumar Ghosh.
The Ghosh family had moved to Fatehpur from village Amarnathganj.
There was a lot of political unrest in India around 1928.
Panna babu too joined the freedom movement.
Later, a 17 year old Pannababu went to Kolkata as coach in an athletic club.
A year down the line, he lost his father.
In spite of all these upheavals Pannababu began to focus his attention on bansuri.
He started performing music for the silent films in Kolkata.
He met director and composer Anil Biswas and began to play in his musical productions.
At the same time, Pannababu experimented with various materials
including metals and other types of wood but finally decided that
bamboo was the most suitable medium for a large bansuri.
He finally settled for a 32-inch long bansuri with its
shatja (tonic) on the kali-2 (second black key on the harmonium).
Pannababu practiced hard and perfected the technique of
Gayaki Ang (vocal style music) on the flute.
He realized the need for meend (gradual seamless transition
from one note to another) from madhyama to nishad in ragas like Bihag, Yaman, et al.
He experimented and invented the seventh hole of madhyama
which was a brilliant addition to his already great performances.
By this time, Pannababu had met great maestros like Ustad Inayat Khan,
Ustad Amir Khan and Ustad Dabir Khan (the last direct descendent of the Senia Gharana
which originated under Taansen).
He had also started giving performances in music conferences.
In 1936, Pannababu started working with Shri Raichandra Boral in Kolkata.
He also happened to meet his first guru, Kushi Mohammed Khan, the harmonium wizard.
Later he took training from Girija Shankar Chakravarti.
In the year 1940, Pannalal Ghosh moved to Mumbai, where he met Baba Allaudin Khan.
He became his disciple and took extensive training for the next six months
and blossomed into a bansuri wizard.
Pt. Pannalal Ghosh earned fame through regular broadcast on AIR
and his performances at music festivals.
In 1956, he was made the conductor and composer of Indian National Orchestra and producer of AIR Delhi.
He had incorporated primarily vocal embellishments like alaap,
dhrupad-ang gayaki, tantrakari, jhala, thumri, dadra and
even folk music into his performance style on bansuri.
He had also created and popularized several new ragas like Deepawali, Hansanarayani and Chandramauli.
In 1960, this talented musician of 49 years, who had exhaled music through
innumerable hollow tubes since he had mistaken a bansuri for a stick,
suddenly stopped breathing on April 20.
He left behind his musical legacy in the hands of his disciples,
the late Shri Haripada Choudhri, Shri Devendra Murdeshwar and Shri Nityanand Haldipur.
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Maestros
of India
