They fell back on their family tradition of theatre and singing to make ends meet. After his death at just forty-one years of age in 1942, her mother Shevanti (Shuddhamati) Mangeshkar moved with her daughters Lata, Uma, Asha, Meena and son Hridaynath to Pune and then to Mumbai. My whole education was watching actors and singers perform.”ĭuring the 1930s, the family suffered financially and her father succumbed to alcoholism. We would stay in each city for months performing plays which went on all night. In an interviewwith the Guardian, Asha Bhosle reminisces about her initiation into theatre, when her father’s troupe was invited to perform for the maharajahs in British India: “He had 300 staff, vast wardrobes, costumes, theatrical sets and props. He was one of the few artistes who openly performed songs penned by the revolutionary Veer Savarkar, which criticised the British rule in India. As the sole bread-earner for her family and a single mother for much of her life, Asha’s is a tale of immense talent and sheer grit.īorn in Sangli, Maharashtra, on September 8, 1933, Asha lost her father Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar – a well-respected Marathi theatre actor and Natya Sangeet musician – when she was just nine years old.
This partnership of muse–friend–spouse brought to Indian films some of the most exciting music with influences drawn from across the world.īut neither the fame nor the comfortable partnership came easy.įrom falling asleep in dusty studios and being woken up to sing her part in BBC’s annual list of 100 women influencers in 2015, it’s been a gruelling journey. Their love for music eventually bound them in a marriage that did not comply with society’s ideal image of the institution but allowed them to grow as creative individuals and be ‘more friends than husband and wife’. Years later, they met again – him a budding composer, she a great singer. At their next studio meeting, RD mentioned that he was eager to give up formal education to start working as a composer, an idea that Asha chided him for. He asked her for an autograph, having heard her Marathi Natya Sangeet on the radio. Asha’s sultry vocals elevated RD’s composition their musical partnership eventually grew into a romantic relationship – Asha’s second marriage and third long-term relationship.Īsha was nineteen years old when she first met the thirteen-year-old son of composer SD Burman, where else but in a recording studio. With radio networks vying for a slice of the pie, Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Radio aired it and gained an audience of thousands tuning in to get their fix.
#ASHA BHOSLE MARATHI BHAKTI SONGS MOVIE#
It didn’t matter that the plot of the movie was anti-drugs the song was subsequently banned on Air India Radio. “Dum Maaro Dum”, that hedonistic anthem composed by RD Burman and hummed by Asha for a sensuous Zeenat Aman extolling the virtues of hashish, pushed the established ideas of morality and music. She was the bad girl of playback singing no one could represent the voice of women who lived on their own terms better than Asha tai.Īsha’s smooth, velvet vocals are a milestone in the evolution of Hindi film music. Yet it was her voice that reigned supreme in the mandatory cabaret or club songs of seventies’ cinema.