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From the very begining of 78 rpm
record marketing in India or more
specifically in Bengal, all the audio
companies started publishing month wise as well as year wise printed
catalogue.They would contain full texts of those companies' new upcoming
songs, drama, comic etc. including details of record number,
singers, lyricist, music
composer, gener of songs etc. A few private organisations
and individuals like Kar & Mahalanavish, Mallik brothers, Mukherji
& Mukherji, Tarafder Brothers, Basumoti Sahitya Mandir, M.L.Saha
Ltd, R.B.Das, Shrishrish Chandra Dey, Adhar Chandra Chakraborty, Nirmal
Chandra Guha also started publishing compilations of recorded songs .Books were captioned as Record
sangeet, |
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| Kaler gaan, Record Kakoli, Binar
jhankar,Gramophone records,Phoonor gaan etc. Compiled books were sold
for a minimum price of 1/-,1.5/-, 2/- (taka) etc .While playing records,
audiance could easily find the lyrics of those moving-record songs and
thus , these catalogue and compilations were
widely accepted by the music lovers
of Bengal. But unfortunately, the companies or the publishers did
not preserve these catalogue and compilations
systematically. A few copies remained here and there
with the collectors in bad condition.Some copies
were noticed damp with moisture, some are
partially damaged by insects, some are torned due to
time. In one word , these most important resources of
gramophone music history has now become |
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| endanger.When
my father Mr. Deba Prasad started his research on
bengali songs on gramophone record, he had to face a lot
of bitter hardship at every step to collect these
documents . More over the non cooperation of relevant
people was remarkable.With his diligence,
passion and hard work for last four decades he has succeeded to
collect most of those endangered documents and his research has
been published in eight books till date. Next books are under
progress. Apart from his research he is trying his best to
preserve these endangered documents both as hard copy as well as
in digital format for the sake of musical posterity of bengal.
Already he has started digitizing all his collection which will
be uploaded here |
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