The music maker passes, the flute plays on

The man was a genius. Not many are there in our cultural clime who can lay claim to composing as many as 21,000-plus songs. Gazi Mazharul Anwar was different, made of deeper and stronger stuff. Since he began penning lyrics in the early 1960s, 1964 to be precise, he knew that was what he needed to do. Along the way, he wrote screen stories and went into directing movies, which again were marks of his versatility.

Gazi Mazharul Anwar's death at the age of seventy-nine takes away from us an individual whose life was based on pure artistry. Today, fifty one years after the liberation of Bangladesh, it will be quite proper to suggest that even if he had stayed away from composing songs after his nationally inspiring Joi Bangla Banglar Joi, a gift to a nation in revolutionary ferment in March 1971 and continuing through the tortuous course of the War of Liberation, he would forever be celebrated for the lyrics making up the substance of the song.

It is a song which has attained immortality, for all the right reasons. But then, all the other songs, or a huge chunk of them --- patriotic and romantic --- which flowed from him only added to the richness that emanated from his poetic mind. In ekbar jete de na amar chhotto shonar gayen, patriotism meshes beautifully with the pastoral. And then there is ektara tui desher kotha bol re ebar bol, which arouses in the listener images of the heritage which has regularly been the bedrock of history in this country.  Anwar's lyrics, rendered in the voice of Shannaz Rahmatullah, enriched the national musical repertoire in no uncertain terms.

Those of us whose education in music began with listening to songs on the radio, back in the 1960s, will certainly never lose sense of the magic our lives were infused with when Bashir Ahmed and Anjuman Ara Begum's duet akaasher haate acche ek rash neel / batasher ache kicchu gondho wafted along into our consciousness, softly drilling into us the charm of love coming wrapped in the tender feel of romance. Add to that the demand placed on the social order, in the inspirational voice of Syed Abul Hadi in achhen amar moktar achhen amar barrister. But, wait. What seems to be a call to society soon transcends to a higher stage, of spirituality, for it is the individual seeking union with his Creator. Anwar's employment of phrases, enhanced by rich imagery, makes inroads in the heart of the listener.

With Gazi Mazharul Anwar's passing it is a whole world of melody in its superior forms, sung by the nation's reputed singers, which breaks down the door into the spaces of our collective memory. We recall the song bujhechhi moner boney rong legechhe in the rendition by Farida Yasmeen, certainly among the pioneers of Bengali music in the 1960s. Move on, to the immensely popular --- it yet gives a powerful lilt to the soul --- gaaneri khatae shorolipi likhe, sung separately by two of Bangladesh's reputed artistes, Runa Laila and Mahmudunnabi. Love, pain and pathos hold up the song, informing listeners that romance shaped in an era soon passes beyond that era to instill love, the ache of separation, into every generation of melody lovers.

Sabina Yasmeen, whose presence is writ large on the nation's musical canvas, lifted Anwar's ei mon tomake dilam to heights that induce the heart to leap up to it and feel the essence of the song, by losing itself in its deep recesses. A young woman in the profundity of love shines, in all her emotions, in the lyrics. Anwar informs his audience that in that song comes the willingness in the singer to sacrifice the soul even as she prepares, in rising passion, for union with her lover.

The songs, or memories of them, come rushing back as we say farewell to Gazi Mazharul Anwar. Who will ever forget the Shahnaz number shagorer teer theke / mishti kichhu haowa ene? Or Hasina Mumtaz's tondrahara noyono amar / ei madhobi rate? Or Sabina Yasmeen's aami rojonigondha phuler moto / gondho biliye jai? The list goes on, for in Anwar shone a lengthening landscape of some of the best of music Bengalis have been heir to.

That Anwar was a powerful presence on the national musical canvas comes through the innumerable artistes who transformed his lyrics into eternal melody. To him they owe, in their diverse ways, a debt of intense gratitude for the heights they were able to scale through lending their voices to his songs. And that ubiquity of national awards coming to him in a lifetime of ceaseless creativity is a humble tribute the nation has paid him.

In Gazi Mazharul Anwar's passing the nation has lost the shepherd playing the flute in the golden glow of the sun at the end of a purposeful day. And yet the inescapable truth is that the music created in that multidimensional working of the flute promises to live on.

The poet goes the way of all flesh. The poetry, adorned in the brilliance of melody, lives on. As we bid him a fond farewell, we walk back to the Mahmudunnabi number, borho eka eka laage / tumi paashe nei boley / nishi jaaga koto kotha / mone eshe shuur tule.

(Gazi Mazharul Anwar, born on 22 February 1943, closed his eyes on life on 4 September 2022)