Happy Birthday Asha Bhosle - I

Asha Bhosle, the diva of Indian film industry was born on September 8, 1933 in Sangli, Maharashtra, into the musical family of Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar. Her father was a theater actor and classical singer who had been born in the village of Mangeshi in Goa. When she was nine years old, her father died and their family moved from Pune to Kolhapur and then to Bombay. She and her famous older sister Lata Mangeshkar began singing and acting in films to support their family.

Her career started in 1943 and has spanned over six decades. She has done playback singing for over 900 Bollywood movies and sold many records. Nobody knows exactly how many songs she has sung, but in one of her interviews she had said that she may have sung more than 12,000 songs in her entire career spanning six decades. Some people believe that she may have sung more than 20,000-25,000 songs in her career.

Asha Bhosle has sung songs primarily from film music and continued to sing and excel at pop music, ghazals, bhajans, traditional Indian Classical music, folk songs, qawwalis, and Rabindra Sangeet. She has sung for actresses right from the 40’s till date and continues to wow audiences with her ever so young voice.

She has worked with various music directors right from O. P. Nayyar to Khayyam to Sachin Dev Burman and Rahul Dev Burman and right upto A. R. Rahman.