Manna Dey sang for Kannada films long before he made Bangalore home

In his career spanning several decades, legendary singer Manna Dey —who passed away after a prolonged illness in Bangalore on Thursday morning aged 94 — sung over 4,000 film songs in languages as diverse as Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Assamese, among others. The Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner, lived in Bangalore with his daughter Sumita Deb and breathed his last in her presence at a city hospital. The singer’s musical association with Kannada began well before he made the Garden City his home, singing songs like Kuhoo Kuhoo Ennutha Haaduva and Jayate Jayate Jayate Kannada, among others. Kuhoo Kuhoo gave him the opportunity to work with Rashtrakavi Kuvempu, whose lyrics the late GK Venkatesh set to tune. But it is his song Manasa Maine Varoo composed by Salil Choudhary, from the Malayalam film Chemeen that is most popular in the south. His only other Malayalam song was one that he sang with P Jayachandran in the film Nellu. “Though I’ve sung only one song with Mannada, what struck me is his love for music. He was a soft-spoken man and a great classical singer. I met him two years ago during a visit to Bangalore. He was hale and hearty then and we discussed music at length. His death is a great loss to Indian music, but the sad part is that in the south he is remembered for Manasa Maine, which is not his best work,” says Jayachandran. Adds GG Nagaraja, who co-authored Madhura Gayaka Manna Dey, with N Venkatesh and Dr Kusuma, “As a journalist, I had interviewed Manna several times. It was through one of my articles that Bangaloreans realized that he lived in the city and that he had sung seven Kannada film songs. Manna’s honest and outspoken nature apart, what I’ve seen is that he was not a habitual drinker. He took to alcohol after a doctor advised him to have a peg or two every day. It was the late Mukesh who drank more often, and that too at Manna’s house. Mukesh used to ask Sulochana to make pakodas for them. Manna had a vice, though, smoking almost every time he sang a song. He was a typical Bengali, who loved his sweets and fish.” Throughout his musical journey, classical music continued to be Manna’s mainstay, with singers like Kavita Krishnamurthy, Divya Raghavan and Archana Udupa accompanying him on his many concerts. Unhappy with the quality of music produced in Bollywood, Manna bid adieu to Hindi film music in the early 90s, concentrating instead on live performances, Bengali film music, ghazals and bhajans.