Galar Har... Music & Lyric Jasim Uddin, www.jasimuddin.org

Amar galar har khule nelo Ogo Lalite Amar har pare ar ki lav habe O jar pran bandhu nai Brojete Bandhu jadi ashe deshe O Rai Krishna soge prun tajilo Kalidaher kulete. Notice how its cadences are rounded and curved, and how by the two lines the monotony is slightly broken. Next, three or four lines are rhymed together and the tune gains in variety as they rise and fall Another man who loved and understood them was Chittaranjan Das of Bengal the leader most beloved Bengal who was himself the very incarnation of Bengal. To him the songs were the expression of the spirit of the national in a sense they were the justification of the fight for freedom. He paid glowing tributes to their greatness in many of his addresses to the people. "How can a nation which sings like that remain subject to foreign-overlords?", he would exclaim. Folk-song is the collective creation of a whole people You cannot calculate the age of a song from the shape of its tune. Even today the one-line song is composed afresh in our villages; and a well-developed melody may be centuries old. Whether ill tune or wording, a folk-song is neither old nor new. From day .to day it changes a little, by the additions and alterations' of different singers, and always it remains true to the ancient pattern. This is what makes it a folk-song-the collective creation of a whole people. This is the course of development from simplicity to complexity. But please bear in mind that I am giving jasim uddin