(b Satara, 8 Sept 1933). Indian film playback singer. She is the younger sister of the playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, and has earned enormous renown for her renditions of Western-influenced rock, pop and disco film songs as well as film ghazals. Like her elder sister, Asha received classical music training from their stage actor-singer father, Dinanath Mangeshkar, and started working in films as a child artist. She sang in a chorus at the age of ten for the Marathi film Majha bala (1943), in which her 14-year-old sister Lata played the heroine. After the family moved to Bombay in 1945, she recorded her first Hindi playback song Sawan aya re, a chorus led also by the singers Geeta Roy and Zohrabai, composed by the music director Hansraj Behl for the film Chunariya (1948). Her first Hindi solo playback recording was Hain mauj main apne begane, do char idhar … for Raat ki rani (1949).
In the early 1950s Asha's elopement and marriage to Ganpat B. Bhosle alienated her from the Mangeshkar family. During the 1950s she recorded more film songs than any other singer, although many were for low-budget films that failed to earn her the same recognition and success as her elder sister. A fruitful partnership with the music director O.P. Nayyar led to several successful songs in 1957 (in Naya daur and Tumsa nahin dekha) and others into the 1960s. After having three children and her subsequent divorce from Bhosle, the family accepted her back in 1960. In 1974 Asha married the music director Rahul Dev Burman (1939–94). This bond grew out of an enormously successful trio which also included the playback singer Kishore Kumar. Her song Dum maro dum by Burman (in Hare rama hare Krishna, 1971) topped the annual Binaca Geetmala film song charts. Asha received an EMI award for recording the most songs – seven – in one day and won the Best Female Playback Singer annual Filmfare award seven times between 1967 and 1978. In 1998 she won a MTV award for her song Janam samjha karo; she continues to record both film and non-film songs and regularly tours abroad.
D. Raheja and K. Kothari: ‘Asha Bhosle’, The Hundred Luminaries of Hindi Cinema (Bombay, 1996), 65 only
T. Schnabel: ‘Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar’, Rhythm Planet: the Great World Music Makers (New York, 1998), 41 only
ALISON ARNOLD