Songs

- Mass Songs of Awakening and Protest
These songs (mostly Bengali) are Salil's political and social statements - musically and lyrically unparallelled. Salil called these songs "songs of conscience".To know and understand him, one must know these songs. Since he was a person with strong political convictions and social conscience, his songs rise far above other contemporary composers. A complete collection of these songs is very difficult to obtain. Quite a few songs from the '40s were never recorded and are lost. This section contains a small introductory article and a listing of these "mass songs". In the early '90s Salil conducted a 50-voice choir for the Doordarshan in Delhi and got his old comrade Yogesh to translate several of his "Mass songs" in Hindi. This programme has been highly acclaimed and is regularly broadcast.

- Bengali Basic (Non-Film) Songs
This section contains nearly the complete list of all the non-film bengali songs composed by Salil and sung by various singers. Most of the lyrics of these songs are by Salil except a very few.There are separate pages for singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Sabita Chowdhury, Hemanta Mukherjee, Sandhya Mukherjee etc. There's also a special page, rather long and therefore split in two, of various other singers who also sang for Salil. I have tried to list the songs chronologically as far as possible. There could be some slip-ups though. Each page opens in a separate window.

- Bengali Rammyageeti (Non-Film) Songs
Since the '50s AIR Radio stations all over India had recorded songs composed and performed by their own artists. Usually they all have their on group of instrumentalists and recording facilities. Kolkata AIR was (and still is) has recorded numerous such songs over the years and they were regularly broadcast. They separated thes songs under various categories viz: "Rammyageeti", "E Maaser Gaan", "Radior Gaan" etc. It is extremely difficult to get a reliable and comprehensible list of these songs. AIR has a strict rule that these songs can not be released commercially. Salil managed to bypass the rules and released quite a few by often changing the lyrics or the arrangement.

- Non-Film Bengali songs with Lyrics only by Salil
Salil was a prolific lyricist. He wrote the lyrics for nearly all his Bengali songs. He even wrote lyrics for some other Music Directors in Bengal. I have created a separate page for Salil as a lyricist.

- Other Non-Film Songs (Basic Songs in Other Languages)
Salil composed non-film songs nearly always in Bengali. However, there are quite a few songs I have unearthed which he had composed in other language including Hindi, Assameese and Malayalam. In this section I have tried to include all these songs.

- Sachin Shankar Ballet Unit and Salil 
From the early '70s till about the end of the '80s he composed some wonderful music for Sachin Shankar Ballet Unit.
Read the full story with the music from the Ballets

- Film Songs
Few people realise that Salil composed music for around 75 Hindi Films, over 40 Bengali Films, 23 Malayalam Films and several other films in Tamil,Telugu,Gujarati,Marathi,Assameese,Oriya etc. No other Indian composer comes even close. I have created separate sections for film songs in different languages. Within each language type, a complete list of all the films in that language is given and within the list one can get a list of the songs within a film.

- Films with only background music composed by Salil
Few people know that Salil had this amazing ability to compose background music for films. His understanding of situations, the story line and the emotions was unsurpassed. He had always composed the background music for his own films in every language. However, other film producers and directors found his ability to compose background music very impressive. It all started when Bimal Roy asked Salil to compose part of the background music for his legendary film "Devdas" when Sachin Dev Burman was the music director of the film. Later B.R.Chopra asked Salil to compose the background music for "Qaanoon" while Ravi was his regular music director. While Qaanoon was a songless film, its remembered for its phenomenal background music. Since then Salil had composed the background music for a large number of Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil films and also for quite a few Documentary films for the Films Division of India.

- Documentaries, TV Films and TV Serials
Unknown to many Salil composed for numerous documentaries,TV Films and TV Serials over the years. Unfortunately there's no comprehensive list available till now. I have been trying to catalog such a list for a long time and have unearthed most of them. However, I am sure that there are still some more I have yet to find.