Arunendu Das was one of the pioneers of late 20th-century alternative Bengali songwriting. While Mohiner Ghoraguli is considered to be the first Bengali Band, Arunendu was the first person to compose Bengali lyrics for songs written specifically to be accompanied by guitar, a genus of Bengali music which has become increasingly popular over time.
Early life
Arunendu Das was born in Yangon, known as Rangoon at the time, to Jodhulal Das – a medical doctor – and Amiyabala Das – a housewife. The outbreak of World War II led Dr. Das to move his family from Rangoon to Bajrayogini village in Bikrampur, Bangladesh. Arunendu Das, one of six children of the Das family, spent his early years in Bangladesh. Arunendu was a member of the scout group of Bhowanipur Mitra Institution, and traveled with them on a camping trip to Puriin the summer of 1955. It was at that time, during a friendly singing competition between various other scout groups camping there, that he conceived the idea of composing his own lyrics. His song ‘Chanchal ek Dal Scout Bhai’, applying his own Bengali lyrics to the tune of the popular contemporary song ‘Ujjawl ek-jhank Paiera’. Arunendu was introduced to the formal rudiments of music and the techniques of playing the steel guitar by his school friend Prabir Kumar Das. He sought to exploit this newfound knowledge fully during his time at Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur, where he studied Architecture. He continued his songwriting and composed parodies of various contemporary songs to amuse and entertain his fellow students. His songs and parodies were immensely popular and many of his friends continued to sing his songs to their friends in various places, even after leaving college. During his time at BE College Arunendu was actually more established and appreciated as a Hawaiian guitar player and by his own admission never dared to sing publicly. Though inspired by Bengali singers like Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Pratima, Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, Manna De, Shyamal, Satinath and Manabendra, Dhananjay who were in their heyday, he never intended to make a career out of music, preferring to write his songs purely for his own enjoyment. Most of his songs were personal in nature and were composed primarily to exercise his newly acquired knowledge about the chords on a steel guitar and to sing to his close circle of friends. He also gained substantial popularity for his numerous "parody"versions of western classics. At this time Arunendu also started to dabble in classical Spanish guitar, not then an easily available option in Kolkata with its usage restricted to the pubs of the Park Street area and certain members of the Anglo-Indian community.
In England
Arunendu came to England in the late sixties and was immediately struck by the lyrics and renderings of contemporary American and English popular songs. Joining the folk club of the market town of Bicester in Oxfordshire where he lived and was practicing as an architect, he picked up certain guitar techniques from the resident and guest artists who performed there. He felt that these techniques could be applied to Bengali songwriting and consequently started writing lyrics in Bengali to conform to those melodic and rhythmic ideas. His cousin Prasanta De, a student of Architecture at BE College at that time and an accomplished folk guitarist in his own right, popularised those songs within the college campus and beyond during the 1970s.
Mohiner Ghoraguli
Arunendu's songs were never intended for a wider audience and this remained the case until one day Gautam Chattopadhyay paid a visit to his residence in Moore Avenue in early 1987. One of Gautam's younger brothersPradip Chatterjee, a talented musician, abstract lyricist, and expressionist, had studied at BE College during the 1970s and had introduced a number of Arunendu's songs to Gautam. Gautam loved them so much that he included Arunendu's songs in all four of his collections of contemporary Bengali songs which he released in the name of his long-disbanded group Mohiner Ghoraguli. During the release of their first come-back album "Aabaar Bochhor Kuri Pore", the accompanying brochure of the same name mentioned about Arunendu as a predecessor of Mohiner Ghoraguli. His songs are also included in "Jhora Somoyer Gaan", "Maya" and "Khyapar Gaan" Arunendu always preferred referring to his songs as "Chhoy Taarer Gaan", as the main inspiration behind writing them was to marry light Bengali songs with the strumming and picking of guitar strings to be in line with the popular songs of the 1960s and 1970s that were prevalent in the international market. In 2004, a CD of some of his songs ‘Arundaar Gaan’ was released by Presto Studio of Kolkata. A short documentary "Le Pocha" by Qaushiq Mukherjee which talks about Bengali alternative music refers Arunendu as a pioneer to alternative music in Bengali.
