Suman Kalyanpur
| Suman Kalyanpur | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Suman Hemmady |
| Born | 28/01/1937 Dhaka, British India |
| Genres | Indian classical music, playback singing |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Years active | 1954–1988 |
Suman Kalyanpur (a.k.a. Suman Hemmady) (born 28 January 1937) is an Indian singer. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in India. She succeeded in achieving recognition of her own during the years of Lata Mangeshkar's monopoly and sang under the baton of almost all the top composers of the period. Many people believe that she could not reach the stature and position which her talent really warranted, in spite of having all the mandatory characteristics required to make a mark in the field of playback singing like great knowledge of classical music, a melodious voice and a wide range.
Her voice was often mistaken to be that of Lata Mangeshkar. Suman Kalyanpur's career started in 1954 and was very popular singer in the 1960s and 1970s. She recorded songs for movies in several languages besides Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Bengali, Oriya and Punjabi. She was a bit unfortunate as she never won the National Film Awards or Filmfare Award for singing but is still considered among the popular singers of her prime time. She has sung a total of 857 Hindi songs.
Suman Kalyanpur (সুমন কল্যানপুর) was born on 28 January 1937 in Dhaka. Suman Kalyanpur's father Shankar Rao Hemadi hailed from an elite Saraswat Brahmin family belonging to Mangalore, Karnataka. Hemmady is a village in Kundapur Taluk of Udupi District , Karnataka. He served on a top post in the Central Bank of India and was posted to Dhaka (now Bangladesh) for a very long period. Apart from father and mother Seeta Hemmady, there were 5 daughters and one son in the family with Suman being the eldest among her siblings. She is an eminent Indian singer. In 1943, her family moved to Mumbai, where she received her musical training.
Suman had always been interested in Painting and Music. After completing schooling from Mumbai’s famed Columbia High School, She got admission in the prestigious Sir J. J. School of Arts for further studies in Painting. Simultaneously, she started learning classical vocal from Pune's Prabhat Films' music director and a close family friend, ‘Pandit Keshav Rao Bhole’. According to Suman, initially singing was just hobby to her but gradually her interest in music increased and she started learning it professionally from ‘Ustad Khan Abdul Rehman Khan’ and ‘Guruji Master Navrang’.
According to Suman, "Everybody at home had an inclination towards arts and music but public performances were strictly prohibited. Still, I could not say 'no' to an offer to sing for the All India Radio in 1952. This was my first public performance after which I got a chance to sing for the Marathi film 'Shukrachi Chandni' released in the year 1953. At that time, Sheikh Mukhtar was making the film 'Mangu' whose composer was ‘Mohammed Shafi’. Sheikh Mukhtar was so impressed with my ‘Shukrachi Chandni’ songs, that he got me to sing 3 songs for the film ‘Mangu’. However, due to some unknown reasons, later ‘O.P,Nayyar’ replaced ’Mohammed Shafi’ and only one of my 3 songs, a lullaby “Koi Pukaare Dheere Se Tujhe” was retained in the film. Thus, I entered Hindi cinema with the 1954 release ‘Mangu’."
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