Amar Paul, legendary Bengali folk singer, passes away

Amar Paul (97), the legendary Bengali folk singer, has passed away in Kolkata on April 20, 2019. Born on May 19, 1922, at Brahmanbaria in undivided Bengal in an area now in Bangladesh, Paul had started taking music lessons from his mother Durgasundari Paul. Afterwards, he learnt classical music from Ayat Ali Khan and folk music from Mani Chakraborty and Suren Chakraborty. He surfaced as a folk singer for the All India Radio in the early 1950s. Paul lent his voice in a number of films including Satyajit Ray’s “Hirak Rajar Deshe”. He has penned several books on folk songs of Bengal and received accolades from various academies around the world.