The Rough Guide to Asha Bhosle

Asha Bhosle

album cover

A Few of Her Thousands of Songs . . .

The Indian singer and film star Asha Bhosle has, over decades of recordings, developed as a kind of singing deity with supernatural powers. (She's immortalized that way in Cornershop's winning 1997 single "Brimful of Asha.") Spend a few minutes listening to Bhosle, who got her start by singing the "bad girl" songs in Bollywood B movies of the 1950s, and this reverence becomes understandable: Her voice is easygoing and endlessly captivating, playful in a flirty, girlish way and at the same time radiating a grown woman's confidence. Since her early films, she's amassed a discography containing over twenty thousand entries, which those who keep track of such things say puts her at or near the top of the "Most Prolific" list. She's sung in more than a dozen languages, done everything from light films to folk songs, classical music to pop and jazz (on the least compelling song here, "Ika Mina Dika," she attempts a campy American swing the liner notes describe as "rock and roll") to the musical settings of love poetry known as ghazals.

Such an impressive list wouldn't mean much if Bhosle was just another sweet voice. But on many of the recordings featured here, which were culled with her assistance to represent the many facets of her career, she appears as something of a divine presence, whose wondrously textured voice exudes grace, magic, possibility.

You don't have to know what she's saying, or have even a basic appreciation of Indian music, to be moved by her extraordinary performances: She is one of those singers whose great technical facility makes every languid, seemingly tossed-off phrase riveting.

Because of her hyperproductivity, surveying Bhosle's career can be difficult. This single-disc volume offers a telescopic overview. It includes two pieces from her albums and many selections from film soundtracks—the down-tempo "Mera kuchh saaman," from the film Ijaazat (1987), has a Dusty Springfield sultriness, while the gliding "Jaame kya haal ho kai," from Maa Ka Aanchal (1970), showcases her command of so-called light classical Hindustani music. Incredibly, it doesn't matter that these tracks visit different styles or were recorded during different eras: All are unified by Bhosle's incandescence.

Genre: World, India
Released: 2003, World Music Network
Key Tracks: "Mera kuchh saaman," "Jaame kya haal ho kai," "Sapna mera toot gaya," "Neeyat-e-shauq"
Next Stop: Sheila Chandra: Weaving My Ancestors' Voices
After That: Cornershop: When I Was Born for the Seventh Time
Book Page: 87

1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die