I listened to Bengali music non-stop for one month, but had no prior knowledge of it. No promises my recommendations aren’t embarrassing, but I loved a good amount of what I heard.
The highlight for me was the music of Salil Chowdhury. I went through his entire catalogue (at least what I could find on youtube/spotify) of Bengali music, and it was brilliant stuff. A few standouts albums:
Raat Bhor
Rai Bahadur
Kinu Goaalaar Goli
Kabita
Jiban je Rakam
Byapika Biday
I look forward to going through his works in other languages. Also, some crazy facts about his impact on the next generations of Indian music, from Wikipedia (slightly edited): "Salil sensed the talent of a guitarist who played in his orchestra and uttered that, "I think he’s going to be the best composer in India". The guitarist turned out to be maestro Ilaiyaraaja. A. R. Rahman's father, R. K. Shekhar used to conduct Salil Chowdhury's arrangements in South Indian film music. Rahman once said that his musical understanding was greatly influenced by the musical sessions conducted by Salil Chowdhury."
I spent less time with S.D. Burman’s music, and I couldn’t find a list of his Bengali albums so I stuck with some Youtube collections. Great music in here though! I’ll try to delve deeper into his work next time, though I suspect that unlike Chowdhury his best work is in Hindi films. I listened to a number of Bappi Lahiri’s Bengali albums but nothing stood out to me. I thought on the next trip I’d try Hemanta Mukherjee’s music. Who are the other greats and what are the great albums?
I also really liked Tagore’s music (Rabindra Sangeet, his own genre) as long as it is the old recordings. The new recordings are horrible, but whenever I heard his music in public it was the new recordings. Krishna Dutta (in her great Calcutta book) recommends the recordings by Kanika Bandopadhyay, Rajeshwari Dutta, Suchitra Mitra, and Subinoy Ray. I also recommend these, all are on youtube (here’s one I liked). But my favorite versions of his songs were from playlists of his songs from old films. I loved these! I think they smoothen the melodies more while still keeping it simple and not overpolishing and over orchestrating it like the newer recordings do. Occasionally those playlists throw in some songs from newer films and they kill the mood. I don’t know what these songs are about, they nearly all sound very sad and melancholic (the film music I linked to above is more varied and in some of it you get a sense of post-Independence nation building optimism, but I have no idea!). Some playlists here:
By the way, I always like the music in Satyajit Ray's movies (mostly instrumental), often by Ray himself after some collaborations with big name Indian classical musicians on his early films. He's on the select list of filmmakers to do their own music (and sometimes who did music for other filmmakers), and he sometimes fused Indian and western classical in a cool way. Worth checking out for fans of film scores.
I liked the folk music I heard too, mostly stuff I found typing Bengali folk music into Youtube. I specifically liked the Baul music, which I think is from wandering musical mystics, but I only spent a few days on it. Worth doing at least that. Here's a compilation from the famous Baul singer Purna Das Baul. I did get to hear live tribal music while taking the train outside the city, that was awesome. I'm always happy giving money to the railway musicians.
I tried some newish (like 90s) Bengali music too but I struggle getting into new music. The truth is, everything I listened to, I found myself yearning to go back to Salil Da…
For something completely different, there’s the fun Disco Jazz by the Bengali singer Rupa, here’s the story behind it. I really like it, it’s more musically sophisticated than most Indian disco, with no cheesy sound effects and a nice use of Indian instruments. Produced and arranged by Ali Akbar Khan’s son Aashish Khan.