Odisha: Legendary Music Director Shantanu Mohapatra critical, admitted to hospital

Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s legendary music maestro Shantanu Mohapatra has been admitted to a Bhubaneswar-based private hospital in critical condition today.

Sources said 84-year-old Mohapatra has been undergoing treatment at Care Hospital. He is suffering from acute pneumonia and his kidneys are not functioning.

Mohapatra is a legendary and multi-talented artist of Odisha and has been associated with Odia music industry for almost 60 years.

He composed first Modern Odia ballad “Konark Gatha” with lyrics by Lyricist Gurukrushna Goswami and sung by Akshay Mohanty. He also wrote ‘Kalijae’ which was sung by Sikandar Alam.

Mohapatra has many firsts to his credits in the field of Odia music as a music composer. He is the first modern lullaby in AIR (‘Soi pada re dhana’ sung by Santilata Rout), first qawali (ae ranga rahiba nahi from Surjyamukhi), first bhangra tune, first fusion and jumping note (Ago Chandrika by Raghunath Panigrahi) to name a few.

He is the first from Odisha to get the Hindi film greats like Lata Mangeskar (Surjyamukhi), Mohd Rafi (Arundhati), Manna Dey (Surjyamukhi), Usha Mangeskar (Arundhati) and experimented with other artists like Suresh Wadekar, Anuradha Paudwal, Usha Uthup, Kavita Krishnamurthy and others with his Mumbai style orchestra music and choral songs.

Mohapatra was born in November 1936 in Baripada of Mayurbhanj district. By profession Mohapatra is a geophysicist (an IIT-Kharagpur pass-out) and had worked with Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC).

He has around 1,900 plus compositions, including 53 films (feature and tele),10 Jatras and 60 dramas by AIR (Cuttack) and 10 dance dramas to his credit . He has also won the highest number of awards and accolades as a music director in Odisha, totalling over 80.

Mohapatra’s composed Odia movie songs includes Sei chuna chuna (surjyamukhi), Mayuri go (Arundhati),Jja ja’re bhasi ja (Chilika teeray), Mun khoji bule (Agni Parikhya), Sei jhilmil (Megha Mukti), Mun ta thili ekutia (Dora), Subhadra kande na (Jaga Balia), Mun jibi (Golamgiri), Kete je sukha (Mukti Tirtha) and others.

Similarly his popular Odia adhunik songs includes Duniya re sabudine/Aei jibana ta eka nataka/Rati re ..ama ghara (Pranab patnaik),Ago Chandrika/Nupura bajaye kie/Nali nali ae (Raghunath Panigrahi) , Je nayana ranga bhara (Sikandar Alam) etc.

Recognizing his lifetime contribution to Odia culture, the Utkal university of Culture conferred honorary D.Litt. on him in 2011.