Subinoy Roy

Roy was initiated to Rabindra Sangeet by his mother at a very early age. Later, while studying Chemistry in graduation level at Shantiniketan, he came in contact with Maestro Shailajaranjan Majumder and started learning Rabindra Sangeet from him. He learned Indian Classical Music from Ramesh Chandra Bandyopadhyay and Girija Shankar Chakrabarty.[2]

At some time, he left Shantiniketan and pursued studying library science from England and joined Indian Statistical Institute as librarian. Still, he became renowned as a teacher of Rabindra Sangeet that too for being an authority in Rabindra Sangeet in its purest form. He became a regular artist of Rabindra Sangeet in the All India Radio since 1943.[3] His first gramaphone record was released on 1949, with two songs; "তুমি ডাক দিয়েছ কোন সকালে" and "এই করেছো ভালো"[4]

Though Subinoy was a puritan in rendition of Rabindra Sangeet, he was adaptable and open to liberalization. Once interviewed on expiry of copyright of the songs written by Rabindranath Tagore, Subinoy Roy expressed:

"I'm not sure where all these do's and don'ts came from.... Rabindranath liked the esraj, violin, flute and tabla with his songs, but if the guitar, synthesizer and drums existed at the time, I'm sure he would have tried those out too. At least he wouldn't reject them if they made his songs sound better.".[5]

Roy died in hospital in Kolkata four days after his wife.[6]

Roy, Subinoy (1379 BS - 1972). রবীন্দ্র সংগীত সাধনা (Rabindra Sangeet Sadhana), A Mukherjee and Sons:Kolkata.