Movies - Asha Bhosle

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Asha Bhosle ¹ (आशा भोसले) (born September 8, 1933) is a popular Indian singer. She is best known as a Bollywood playback singer, although she has a wider repertoire. Her career started in 1943 and has spanned over six decades. She has done playback singing for over 890 Bollywood movies . She is the sister of Lata Mangeshkar.

Asha Bhosle is considered a "versatile" singer and has sung many different type of songs though she is best known for her 'cabaret' numbers in Hindi films. She has sung in her mother tongue Marathi, other Indian languages as well as in some foreign languages such as English, Russian and Malay).

She has provided the singing voice for almost all popular Bollywood actresses from the 1950s to date, including Madhubala, Waheeda Rehman, Rekha, Tabu, Urmila Matondkar, Kajol, Karisma Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukerji, Kareena Kapoor, Amisha Patel, Bipasha Basu and others. She has sung duets with almost every notable Indian playback singer including Manna Dey, Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mahendra Kapoor, Yesudas, S P Balasubramaniam, Udit Narayan and Abhijeet.

Brief biography

Asha Bhosle was born in the small hamlet of Goar in Sangli, Maharashtra, into the musical family of Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar. When she was just nine years old, her father passed away. The family moved from Pune to Kolhapur and then to Bombay. She and her elder sister Lata Mangeshkar started singing and acting in films to support their family. She sang her first film song Chala Chala Nav Bala for the Marathi movie Majha Bal (1943). The music for the film was composed by Datta Dawjekar. She made her Hindi film debut when she sang the song Saawan aaya for Hansraj Bahl's Chunariya (1948), .

At the age of 16, she eloped with her 31-year old lover, Ganpatrao Bhosle, and married him against her family's wishes. The marriage failed miserably. Her husband and in-laws ill-treated her. After few years of marriage, young Asha Bhosle returned to her maternal home with her two children and pregnant with her third child, Anand. She continued to sing in films to earn money.

At that time, prominent playback singers like Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Lata Mangeshkar (her sister) monopolized the singing for the "heroine" roles and the big films. Asha Bhosle got the assignments they didn't take: singing for the bad girls and vamps or in the second-grade movies. In 1950s, she sang more songs than any other playback singer in Bollywood, but most of these songs were in B or C-grade films. In addition , she sang many songs in Marathi which are considered classics such "Bugadi mazi sandli" and "Nach re mora"

Asha Bhosle first tasted success with the songs of B. R. Chopra's Naya Daur (1957), composed by O. P. Nayyar. She had started singing earlier for O.P. It is no exaggeration to say that had there been no OP to 'mould' Asha's voice, she would have continued to sing the B or C grade film songs. OP was the one who took her in hand and trained her voice - the result is there for all to see in OP's films like Naya Daur, Phagun, Howrah Bridge, Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Ek Musafir Ek Haseena, Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi, Mere Sanam, Humsaya, Sawan Ki Ghata and that mega hit "Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon". Asha's best in her whole career came during this period with OP.

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