Sunil Ganguly

Sunil Ganguly
Sunil Ganguly (Steel Guitarist)
Born	(1938-01-01)1 January 1938
Died	12 June 1999(1999-06-12) (aged 61) Kolkata
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Steel Guitarist
Known for	Indian Instrumental Music
Awards	Asian Paints Shiromani award for contribution to music

Sunil Ganguly (Bengali: সুনীল গাঙ্গুলি; 1 January 1938 – 12 June 1999) was an Indian instrumentalist from the city of Kolkata (Calcutta) who played the Hawaiian electric guitar. He produced many 78 RPM, SP, EP, Super-7, LP discs, audio cassettes and CDs from HMV, Concord Records and Sagarika including classical-based songs like "Yaad piya ki aaye". He made records of Indian Hindi film songs, classical based songs, and Bengali songs, and popularised the Hawaiian guitar in India. At his peak, there used to be two LPs released during the Pujas every year by HMV, one containing songs by Lata Mangeshkar, and the other having instrumentals by Sunil Ganguly. The film hits he recorded were instant hits with the youth. Sunil Ganguly did many public performances all over India, including Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Patna, Guwahati etc, including programs in classical music. He did one-man whole night shows in Mumbai, played in reputed College fests like the IITs, RECs. Some of the best musicians of the era, like Sri Y S Mulki, Sri Dilip Roy, Sri Samir Khasnabis, Sri Swapan Sen, Sri Manohari Singh accompanied him on his recordings and performances. He was a regular performer at Doordarshan programs (TV) in Kolkata and Mumbai, AIR (All India Radio), Radio Ceylon (Sri Lanka). His radio programs (like Saaz aur Awaz on Radio Ceylon) were popular and were listened to by many all over India, and this program continues to this date. He inspired an entire young generation to play Indian music on the Hawaiian guitar. He had many number of successful students, who are continuing his style of playing songs and in turn are coaching students in India and abroad.
Ganguly was born at Sonamura village in Tripura on 1 January 1938. He moved with his parents to Kolkata in his childhood. He had a fondness for the Hawaiian guitar from a very early age. After some basic training, he took the radio audition test, while he was studying in Class 9, and passed in one attempt. At the insistence of his relatives he participated in All India Youth Guitar competition which was quite well known at the time, and came first, to his own amazement. At this time he trained in Western music under Oscar Jones, a reputed teacher in Calcutta at that time. But this could not satisfy him. He was fond of Indian classical music, and used to attend the music conferences. Many a times he could not afford to buy a ticket, and hence used to listen from the pavements outside (as narrated by him in his last interview to Bartaman magazine). He later trained under the sitarist Pt. Ajoy Sinha Roy, who himself was a direct disciple of Baba Alauddin Khan. Ganguly, therefore, had a profound knowledge of North Indian Classical music. He developed a style of playing Classical Raga-based dhuns and gats on the Hawaiian guitar, which was his own unique style. He was the first to bring in the 'gayaki' style of playing which was non-existent at the time, and this led to the huge popularity of the instrumentals he rendered on the Hawaiian guitar, be it classical based film songs, ghazals, Tagore songs, Nazrul songs, or other popular songs. He played a wide variety of songs in his career, including Hindi film songs, rare songs of Lata Mangeshkar, Ghazals, by Jagjit Singh, Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Bengali film songs, Tagore songs, Nazrulgeeti, Bengali songs of prominent composers like Satinath Mukhopadhyay, Shyamal Mitra, Hemanta Mukherjee, Bihu songs in Assamese language etc. He made many number of compositions and dhuns based on various Ragas, and he used these to train his students for number of years before they were allowed to play a song. Ganguly also had a sharp background of Western music, including chords. He was very fond of the Spanish guitar and chords. Whenever he used to teach a song to his students, it used to be complete with interlude music, chords, and some of these interludes (for ex: the sitar piece in the song 'Hum hai mataye koochao Bazaar ki Tarah' or the chords in the song "Pal Pal Dil ke Paas") were quite intricate and high in complexity.