Legendary music director Shantanu Mohapatra passed away at a private hospital here late on Tuesday night. He was 84.Mohapatra was suffering from acute pneumonia and kidney-related ailments.
He was associated with the 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.
Mohapatra has many firsts to his credits in the field of Odia music as a music composer like 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, and first fusion and jumping note (Ago Chandrika by Raghunath Panigrahi).
He is the first from Odisha to work with Hindi film greats like Lata Mangeshkar (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. By profession, he was a geophysicist. The Utkal University of Culture had conferred honourary DLitt on him in 2011.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and many other eminent personalities condoled Mohapatra’s demise. He described Mohapatra as an “unfading talent”.
