WOMAD

Asha Bhosle

From India

Born in Sangli, Maharashtra - the state in which Mumbai, or Bombay, is located - Asha Bhosle, like her two siblings, inherited an innate sense of music from her father, the legendary classical singer Dinanath Mangeshkar. Early in her career Bhosle trained in classical singing, but soon she followed the footsteps of her elder sister Lata Mangeshkar, working as a playback singer (a singer whose songs are pre-recorded and later lip-synced by film actresses onscreen) for the growing Indian film industry. At the age of 15, she sang her first professional playback song for the film Chunari. The late 1940s and the early '50s were teeming with composers and singers, but within a decade Asha Bhosle and her sister were the two leading vocalists whose voices graced the lips of every actress who sang in films. Bhosle carved a niche for herself as the most versatile singer in the business, the common voice for both virginal saints and provocative sinners alike. In addition to classical ragas, ghazals, geet, bhajans, and qawalis, Bhosle's silken voice embraced with ease the then-new rock and pop influences entering mainstream cinema music.

Two partnerships - with O.P. Nayyar and R.D. Burman - assured her songs a permanent place in music history. The famed music director O.P. Nayyar is credited with breaking Bhosle's career in the 1950s. A trendsetter of rhythm and melody, Nayyar refined Bhosle's lyricism and extended the lower scale of her voice while allowing her to stretch her breath with long melodies. Two decades later, Bhosle began working with R.D. Burman, a music director on the fore of the avant-garde whose diverse westernized influences pushed filmic music where no composer had gone before. In retrospect, Burman emerges as one of the most popular and gifted composers in film history, and Bhosle as his inimitable voice, muse, and wife.

Indefatigable and energetic, Bhosle has set records that boggle the mind. She remains the most-recorded artist in the world with more than 12,500 titles. She has also sung the largest number of duets with both the leading male singers of the industry, Mohd. Rafi (880) and Kishore Kumar (656). She has performed live concerts throughout the world, singing songs in 18 languages. Winner of seven Filmfare awards in India, she has also received the National Award twice for her memorable ghazals in Umrao Jaan and Ijaazat (which featured a soulful score by R.D. Burman). The ultimate accolade from the Indian film industry came with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the most coveted honor for milestone contributions in cinema.

Despite the longevity of her career, Bhosle's artistic outlook is forward-thinking. Not content with her fame as a playback singer, over the past decade Bhosle has reinvented herself as a pop star. In 1996 she released her first pop album, Rahul and I, which remixed her older, classic songs for a new dance audience and stayed on the "Top of the Pops" list for months. The follow-up album, Janam Samjha Karo, won an MTV Award in 1997. In 2001, she pushed the envelope further with Aap Ki Asha, the first album to feature her own compositions. The album represented a startling departure that was stylistically removed from even contemporary music directors, but the singer embraced the change. Whatever her current project, Bhosle maintains that she works with the future in mind: "In music, new trends, other influences, orchestration, lyric patterns change. You just must have an open, objective mind."

Most recently, Bhosle collaborated with the Kronos Quartet on the 2005 Nonesuch release You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R. D. Burman's Bollywood. The Grammy-nominated album, featuring vocals by Bhosle, is a collection of Burman's compositions for film and beyond.

Biography adapted from notes by Gautam Rajadhyaksha.