NEW DELHI: Asha Bhosle, one of the most celebrated voices in Indian music, died on Sunday at a hospital in Mumbai. She was 92.
Bhosle was admitted to Breach Candy Hospital on Saturday night with a chest infection. In the morning, her son, Anand Bhosle, told reporters gathered at the clinic that she had died.
Born in Sangli in 1933, Bhosle began her career at the age of 10, when she and her elder sister, the famed Lata Mangeshkar, sang to support the family after their father’s death.
Her first recording was “Chala Chala Nav Bala” for the 1943 Marathi film “Majha Bal.” She entered Hindi cinema five years later with “Saawan Aaya” in “Chunariya” in 1948.
By the mid-1950s, she was performing as a lead playback singer and went on to perform 12,000 songs in 20 Indian languages. A playback singer records songs to which the movie’s stars can mime.
Like her sister, Bhosle had a high, lyrical voice trained in Hindustani classical music, with a range spanning about three octaves. Together, they dominated female singing in Bollywood for decades.
While Mangeshkar’s soprano became best known in the vocals for Bollywood heroines, gaining her the titles of “Nightingale of India” and “Queen of Melody,” Bhosle was crowned the “Queen of Versatility” for her performances that ranged from classical ghazals to rock and roll.
Her passing marks the end of a generation of India’s most beloved playback singers. Her sister died in 2022, also at the age of 92.
“It’s a great loss. It’s a void which cannot be filled,” said Trinetra Bajpai, co-author of “Those Magnificent Music Makers,” an anthology on Indian music directors.
“She was one of the last singers of the era, the magnificent era, in which great singers, great voices were heard. Asha Bhosle is irreplaceable — a marvelous singer, an all-rounder singer. She was one of the greatest among Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar.”
Rafi, Mukesh and Kumar were three of the most love male playback singers of Indian cinema, especially active — like Bhosle and Mangeshkar — in the golden era of Bollywood through the ’70s and ’80s
“Future generations can never replace the singers of that great era,” Bajpai said. “The chapter of great singing has ended.”
