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India Abroad, Cover Story >>
If anyone had a doubt that the 73-year-old Asha Bhosle, whose ever flexible voice undergoes more 'makeovers' in a year than Madonna, as per The New York Times, has finally become an international star that person should have been at the fabled Carnegie Hall just the other day.
The Carnegie Hall concert named Kronos Quartet & Asha Bhosle - India Calling: Songs From R D Burman's Bollywood was a sold-out event, followed by another sold-out concert the next day, April 9 in Boston.
As Asha entered the stage during the second act of the concert that had, till then heard the Grammy winning Kronos Quartet perform instrumental numbers, more than 2800 people who packed the auditorium leapt to their feet, giving her a prolonged ovation. Most of them were Americans. And many had surely heard her songs on the Grammy-nominated 2005 CD, You've Stolen My Heart, Songs From R D Burman's Bollywood.
'She's been an icon for years in the world of Bollywood,' noted Chris Nickson, critic for All Music Guide 'but Asha Bhosle's international profile has never been higher.The new album, Asha Bhosle: Love Supreme, which has some of her favorite, newly sung ghazals and originally recorded duets, capitalizas on her new fame, he added.
Asha, with her 12,500 recorded titles in about six decades is the world's most recorded artist, and she has sung in more than 20 languages mostly in Hindi but also in Tamil (including the recent hit Chandramukh'i), Bengali, Kannada - and Russian. She has also won a raft of awards including one of India's most prestigious honors, the Dadasaheb Palke Award, given for lifetime achievement.
And she has performed previously at Carnegie Hall, joining a handful of Indian masters such as Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan.
But her recent performance, following the widely praised You Have Stolen My Heart album, drew a significant number of non-South Asian admirers.
When David Harrington, the artistic director of Kronos and who was the key person in reimagining and re-recording of Burman melodies including six vocals by Asha for the CD, declared that he would cherish the opportunity to perform with Asha forever, the audiences burst into another prolonged applause.
'In India, and among the South Asian communities across the world, Asha is like Elvis, he had told India Abroad a few months ago. Although Kronos has per formed with wonderful vocalists from across the world before, now I can proudly say we have a lead singer who is growing younger year by year. So much so I find it difficult to convince anyone who has heard her songs on our CD that she is 73.'
And in repositioning Asha Bhosle as a world-class singer who needs to be paid attention by world audiences, Harrington said, he was also bringing 'an ingenious film composer [Burman] into the world of Kronos and into the homes of music lovers across the globe.
Along with Burman, the Kronos were also making Asha an international icon.
"The Carnegie Hall honor to her wras long, long overdue," said Yashpal Soi who has organized over 50 Asha Bhosle concerts across America in the past 25 years.
"Nobody doubts she is a world phenomenon but it is only now that Americans, British and music lovers in many European countries are realizing what an amazing talent she has," said Soi, who has organized her concerts at Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall all firsts for the singer. However, it was a long-held dream for Asha that she should perform for mainstream audiences at Carnegie Hall. Now she has lived her dream.
"Last week at Carnegie Hall and then in Boston, we felt that she was born - with another very long career," he continued. "She sang for our grandparents, she held our parents in her spell, she seduced us with her voice, and now she is enchanting our children. She surely will be entertaining our grandchildren with her new songs," he said.
Though Asha has been interviewed by the likes of The New York Times before, this time around she was not only interviewed before the concert, she also spoke with the widely respected National Public Radio after the concert. And she received some of the best praise in her six decades long career.
Before the concert with Asha, Kronos had a number of performances with other artists at the Carnegie Hall but they were held in the Zankel Hall that seats about 600.
'It had good reason to make the jump, with the singer Asha Bhosle as the soloist in the second half of the program,' wrote The New York Times. The concert drew a huge audience, with the quartet's usual following dwarfed by Indian-music fans who were well versed in Ms. Bhosle's repertor and responded to it as rapturously as a Western pop audience responds to a band playing its biggest hits.'
Asha has an 'expressive voice, the review continued, especially singling out her non-film song, Rishte Bantefain. 'Ms. Bhosle's voice wove evocatively through hypnotic backing with the organ, pipa and tabla in the foreground.
Before the concert, the Times had written about how 'pop stardom usually comes in a youthful, toned package, one dressed in clothes that leave little to the imagination, adding that such an image was no consequence to sari-wearing Asha.
'As an ever-changing array of Bollywood heroines dance and lip-sync to the sound of her voice, the Times added Asha undergoes a huge number of makeovers. 'Over the decades, she has had to sound coquettish, ethereal or matronly while channeling royal courtesans, cabaret stars or stoned hippies.
Another prominent publication, Newsday too reviewed her performance.
'At 73, but looking decades younger, Bhosle added Carnegie Hall to her list of conquests, it wrote, mentioning how Asha told the audience right at the start of her per formance, 'I will try to please you.'
'And please she did, added Newsday, 'with her disarmingly modest, girlish voice refracting into a thousand different colors, dipping seductively into its lower range and wrapping itself effortlessly around myriad key changes in the first selection Chura IAya Hoi Turn Ne (from the movie, Faadon Ki Baraat).
The review also praised her performing another song: 'Piercing high notes and low, sensual moans punctuated Dum Maro Dum (from the movie Hare Rarna, Hare Krishna) which necked and swirled over the darkly passionate playing of Kronos and tabla master Zakir Hussain.'
For Asha Bhosle, singing the Burman classics anew with additional music by Kronos, or singing sensuous numbers such as the Lucky Lips in the Salman Khan movie Lucky: No Time for Love is the continuation of a journey she feels will never end.
"I am a workaholic' she says in her husky, lilting voice. "If I stop singing, it will be the end." 04/21/06
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