Hemant Kumar (a.k.a. Hemanta Mukherjee) was a singer, composer, and producer in the Hindi and Bengali film industry. He is most known for his Bollywood songs from the 1950's and 1960's. In his career, he recorded approximately 2000 songs.

Hemant Kumar was born Hemanta Kumar Mukherjee on June 16, 1920 in Benares (Varanasi). He had three brothers and one sister. Although he was born in Benares, his family originally hailed from Baharu in West Bengal. When he was young, his family shifted to Calcutta. There he grew up and attended Mitra Institution school of Bhawanipore. After he graduated from Intermediate, he attended Jadavpur University and began studying engineering.

Hemant Kumar's interest in music began early. He sang his first song in All India Radio in 1933. He was only 13 at the time.

However it was never clear that Hemant Kumar would become a singer. His original training was in engineering, but he dropped out of the University to pursue other paths. Initially he tried his hand at writing; he even managed to have a short story published in a major Bengali magazine. But after a while it became clear that his calling was music.

Hemant Kumar had a reasonable degree of formal training in music. He had several teachers. The major portion of his training seems to have been under Sailesh Duttagupta. He also studied under Phani Banerjee, and received his training in Rabindra Sangeet under Anadi Dastidar. Later he was a disciple of the great Faiyaz Khan. Unfortunately this last training did not last very long, it ended with the death of Faiyaz Khan in 1950.

It was in 1937 that he recorded his first disk. The names of the songs were Janite Jadi Go Tumi and Balo Go Balo More. The lyrics to these songs were written by Naresh Bhattacharya and the tune and arrangement was by Sailesh Dattagupta. This was recorded under the Columbia label. Thereafter he had a sustained output of non-film songs from the Gramophone Company of India up until 1984.

His career as a film playback singer began with the Bengali film "Nemai Sanyas"; this was released in 1941. After that he did playback for a number of other Bengali films.

The Bengali film industry was good training ground, but for him to attain a wider audience, he had to work in the Hindi film industry. He was first able to sing his first Hindi film song in "Irada" which was released in 1944. This was under Pt. Amarnath's music direction.

But Hemant wanted to show that he could do more than just sing. He wished to show his abilities as a music director. He was first able to do this in the Bengali film "Abhiyatri" in 1947. These were all very fine achievements, but he was just not able to attain commercial success.