Zohrabai Ambalewali

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Zohrabai Ambalewali
Singer
Years active1932–1953
Known forRattan (1944)
Zeenat (1945)
Anmol Ghadi (1946)
SpouseFaqir Muhammad

Zohrabai Ambalewali (1918 – 21 February 1990) was an Indian classical singer and playback singer in Hindi cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. She was considered one of the most popular female playback singers of early and mid 1940s.

She is best known for her

Hindi film industry. However, by the late 1940s, the arrival of new voices like Geeta Dutt and Lata Mangeshkar
, meant Zohrabai Ambalewali's career faded away.

Early life and background

Born and brought up in

Hindustani music.[1]

Career

Ambalewali started her career at age 13, as a singer with the

Naushad Ali, and such hit songs as "Aai Diwali Aai Diwali" and "Akhiyan Mila Ke, Jiya Bharma Ke".[3] She sang for music director Naushad, again in hit films like Anmol Ghadi (1946), Mela (1948), and Jadoo (1951).[4] She also sang a qawwali with Noor Jehan and Kalyani "Aahen Na Bhareen Shikway Na Kiye" in Zeenat (1945), which was the first ever Qawwali recorded in female voices in South Asian films and became very popular among the public.[5]

This was the era when heavy thumri-style and the leading playback singers with nasal voices were singing in the Hindi cinema, with singers like Shamshad Begum, Khurshid, Amirbai Karnataki. This was right before the arrival of Lata Mangeshkar in 1948, which along with Geeta Dutt and Sudha Malhotra shifted the popular taste towards finer voices, effectively bringing their careers to a gradual end. Another major film playback singer of that era Noor Jehan decided to migrate to Pakistan and had a highly successful singing career in Pakistan until she died in 2000.[5]

Zohrabai Ambalewali retired in the 1950s from the film industry, though she continued to sing at the performances of her daughter Roshan Kumari, a noted Kathak dancer, who also performed in Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar (1958).[1]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c "Zohrabai, Amirbai and Rajkumari". Women on Record. Retrieved 4 July 2019. Profile of Zohrabai Ambalewali on womenonrecord.com website
  2. ^ Sundar, Pavitra (2007). Sounding the Nation: The Musical Imagination of Bollywood Cinema. University of Michigan. p. 73.
  3. ISBN 978-1-136-77284-9
    .
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Filmography of Zohrabai Ambalewali". Upperstall.com website. Archived from the original on 23 January 2013. Retrieved 15 April 2024.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-81-88789-07-8
    .

External links
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