Vishmadev Chattopadhyay

Vishmadev Chattopadhyay is an Hindustani classical vocalist. VishmadevChattopadhyay, a prominent name of the musician who carved the musical legacy of Bengal was an extraordinary genius singer. He imprinted the impression of his creativity in almost every field of music and became a legendary figure in his lifetime.

He was born on 8th November 1909 at Sarai village near Pandua station of Hooghly district in West Bengal. He became famous as child prodigy singer at the age of five. His parents were AshutoshChattopadhyay and Prabhabati Devi, the descendant of SadhakGangananda Swami of that Chattopadhyay family of Hooghly district to other branch of which Thakur Ramkrishna belonged. His is the family of spiritual background. Vishmadev was the first one in the family who had taken up music as his life style. He was brought to Kolkata when he was one year old. He was admitted at Sanskrit Collegiate School and appeared at Proveshika examination from Calcutta Training Academy. Thereafter he took admission to Vidyasagar College.

Vishmadev had taken his initial training in music from ShriNagendranathDatta. Later on he was under tutelage of KhalifaBadal Khan of Delhi gharana for fourteen years. At the age of twelve his first record was published from HMV under prestige label with two Tappas of Nidhubabu. He stood first in all the three categories Khyal, Tappa and Thumri two years consecutively in an inter college music competition and was awarded Bestman prize. The marks that he secured enabled the college also to achieve the first rank.

KajiNazrul Islam was an admirer of Vishmadev. At his will Vishmadev joined Megaphone Record Company in the year 1933 as a Music Director cum Trainer. During this year Megaphone published his record on Khyal based on Malkaush and Aasha raga. His name fanned out beyond the border of Bengal. He started receiving invitations from Allahabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Benaras, Delhi, Mathura even from the distant Sikarpur near Karachi of the then undivided India. With this his performance was regularly live-broadcasted from All India Radio. Megaphone Company had released many of his records on Khyal and Thumri based on different ragas. He popularizedRaagpradhan Bengali songs in an innovative way. His Bhajan and Harmonium playing records were also published at that time. In addition, he used to tune in various songs for other singers and even published records on the orchestra music. Records of many dramas on disc were published from Megaphone Record Company of which Vishmadev was the Music director.