Anil Biswas Biography 
Anil Biswas was a very popular music director of Bollywood yesterdays of black and white movies. His name is always taken with great respect when we mention great Bollywood artists of 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. He was one among those leading composers who laid basement to Bollywood music and created a new path of his own. Famous singer of 50’s – Meena Kapoor who sung ‘Meri jaan murgi ke ande’ was his second wife. He was first married to Ashalata (actress of 40’s). He was behind the success of many singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Talat Mehmood, Surendranath, Parul Ghosh, Amirbai Karnataki and Roshan Ara Begum. Many of them began their careers singing Anil’s songs. Lata Mangeshkar has once admitted that Anil Biswas gave her tips and trained her for breathing control during recording songs.
Apart from being a music director and singer, he owns the credit of introducing orchestral music and full-blooded choral effects to Indian cinema. He is also credited for the first Indian orchestra of twelve pieces. He was equally verse in western symphonic music and Indian classical and folk tunes, thus becoming one of the best music directors India has ever witnessed. His contributions to Bollywood are immensely huge and his active period was 1935 to 1965. He was the first composer to introduce western orchestration, using indigenous instruments both in the songs as well as in their melodic interludes - a trend that was started by this great composer of yesterdays. Not only that, he was the composer who introduced the technique of ‘cantala’, where one line overlaps the other in contra-melody for the first time in Indian music.
He has composed tunes for more than 90 films of which Roti (1942), Kismet (1943), Anokha Pyaar (1948), Taraana (1951), Waaris (1954), Pardesi (1957) and Char Dil Char Raahein (1959). He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1986. He has sung for numerous films as a playback singer as well. Anil Biswas died in New Delhi on 31 May 2003 at the age of 88.
Published: N/A
Updated: August 23, 2013
