{"id":5355,"date":"2016-06-03T02:30:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T21:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5355"},"modified":"2016-06-03T02:30:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T21:00:47","slug":"asha-bhosle-90s-singer-musician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5355","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up in the \u201990s Would Have Been No Fun Without Asha Bhosle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span><\/p><\/div>

s a \u201990s kid, my earliest memories of <\/span>Asha Bhosle<\/span><\/a> involve the singer being draped in a resplendent off-white saree wearing delicate jewellery, a deliberately conspicuous flower in the hair bun, and a voice that defied notions of age, expectations, and conventions.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThe \u201990s were a strange, complicated, coming-of-age era in music. <\/span>Bollywood <\/span><\/a>was still recovering from the battering of the disco beats and the gilded, blinding dazzle of Bappi Lahiri. The traditional, classical melodies of the \u201960s seemed incompatible with the post-liberalisation modernised Indian taste and the poetry of the \u201970s had lost its sheen to the emergence of consumerism and materialistic glamour. Moreover, the emergence of Indie-pop in the \u201990s opened the floodgates for an entirely new generation of musicians and composers who were young, dynamic, and didn\u2019t<\/span> shy away from experimenting<\/span> experimenting with their sound. The Western influences on our music moved past sampling and Lahiri-esque imitations and evolved into a more synthesised sound that was distinctly modern, even when the core melody was Indian. It was an era of innovation and young blood.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThe past seemed all but gone. But Asha Bhosle, who started her career back in 1943, stayed. At that time, it must have been easy to dismiss an ageing Asha tai; it wouldn\u2019t have been hard to perceive her as nothing more than a relic of the past, desperate to remain relevant in these changing times. And, yet what most people forget is that she was the flagbearer of the Western sound in Indian consciousness long before it even became a thing.<\/span>\n\nFunnily, I however don\u2019t remember Asha Bhosle as a misfit. I don\u2019t remember her as someone whose relevance was in dispute. Instead, I remember her as the leading force of the \u201990s, a 60-something singer who adapted with<\/span> musicians in their 20s <\/span><\/a>as quickly as she revolutionised the length and breadth of what constituted Indian music. And, she did it on her own terms.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nIt was this very decade that witnessed the emergence of Asha Bhosle, the pop star who clearly knew what she was doing. I remember discovering several<\/span> R D Burman <\/span><\/a>melodies only because Asha Bhosle had remixed and repackaged them, creating versions that were trendier and in sync with the times. Her album \u201cRahul and I\u201d \u2013 criticised at the time by purists for tampering with classic melodies \u2013 was in fact a window for many of us into the addictive world of Burman Da\u2019s music. I\u2019m not suggesting that Burman Da needed extra boost of any sort, but sometimes, nostalgia and quality aren\u2019t enough to attract a new generation of audience. Asha tai understood this long before the Bollywood caught on and started an abominable trend of remixes. And unlike Bollywood, Asha tai\u2019s remixes always retained a sense of class, quality, and most importantly the essence of the original. Besides R D Burman, she also reintroduced legends like Mehndi Hasan and Farida Khanum through her modernised renditions, even as she continued to do her bit to keep the traditional ghazals and classical melodies alive.\u00a0<\/span>\n

It was this very decade that witnessed the emergence of Asha Bhosle, the pop star who clearly knew what she was doing.<\/p><\/blockquote> \nNow when I look back, it makes me realise that there is much to remember from Asha tai\u2019s 90s avatar. \u201cKabhi toh nazar milao\u201d was Adnan Sami\u2019s breakout song, but it was her mesmerising touch, conveying the intensity of pangs of longing, that made it the ultimate love ballad of the early 2000s. It seems almost unbelievable that she he was 76 at the time. Yet, one of my most cherished memories of Asha Bhonsle\u2019s \u201990s resurgence was her comeback. She sang \u201cTanha Tanha\u201d in <\/span>Ram Gopal Varma\u2019s <\/span>Rangeela<\/span><\/i>, <\/span><\/a>a song that became more than just a runaway hit. It transformed into a youth anthem that was an impossibly sensuous, peppy, and innocent at the same time.<\/span>\n\nCome to think of it, Asha Bhosle\u2019s career graph in the \u201990s is essentially a microcosm of her oeuvre. In a career that spans over several decades, her biggest achievement is not just that she has a Guinness Book of Record-worthy repertoire of songs. Instead it is the fact that she has consistently charted a trajectory that was as casually rebellious and subversive as it was pathbreaking. Stereotyped as a \u201ccabaret\u201d singer at the very beginning of her career, she had to struggle to break out of a mould that boxed her as the voice of the \u201cbad\u201d girls.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nBut the inimitable Asha tai went on to defy every label that tried to box her into predefined categories that were as much about music as they were about patriarchal notions of morality. Take the fact that just when the industry typecast her as someone who could only sing \u201cwestern\u201d songs, she went on to win a National Award for her classical ghazals in <\/span>Umrao Jaan<\/span><\/i>. And when the assumptions of her age tried to put her down, she delivered some of the most resounding hits of her career, effectively voicing for younger heroines like Urmila Matondkar, <\/span>Madhuri Dixit,<\/span><\/a> and Gracy Singh. Even as her personal life remained fraught with adversities and rumours of her presumed affairs and liaisons dominated gossip columns, she remains unwavering committed to reinventing herself as a singer at every chance possible.<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s been a while since the \u201990s but I still continue to groove to \u201cAaja Aaja\u201d with as much passion as I have spared for adoring the subtle intensity of \u201cMera Kuch Samaan\u201d. Ask any kid who grew up in the decade and they\u2019ll probably admit to the same. Any game of antakshari is still incomplete without at least a dozen Asha Bhosle numbers being belted out. I suppose, it is easy to resort to clich\u00e9s and call her a living institution but institutions tend to be static and insular. Asha Bhosle on the other hand, has been a force pulsating with life for over eight decades now. Even in 2019, she remains a constant in our collective consciousness and that perhaps is the biggest homage to any artist.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember discovering several RD Burman melodies only because Asha Bhosle had remixed and repackaged them, creating versions that were trendier and in sync with the times. Burman Da hardly needed extra boost, but sometimes, nostalgia and quality aren\u2019t enough to attract a new generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":5356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[9120,368,4447,9121,9122],"class_list":["post-5355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-asha-bhosle","tag-music","tag-musicians","tag-rd-burman","tag-song"],"yoast_head":"\nGrowing Up in the \u201990s Would Have Been No Fun Without Asha Bhosle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I remember discovering several RD Burman melodies only because Asha Bhosle had remixed and repackaged them, creating versions that were trendier and in sync with the times. 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Burman Da hardly needed extra boost, but sometimes, nostalgia and quality aren\u2019t enough to attract a new generation.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5355\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-02T21:00:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1567919470.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1520\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"850\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Runjhun Noopur\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Growing Up in the \u201990s Would Have Been No Fun Without Asha Bhosle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"I remember discovering several RD Burman melodies only because Asha Bhosle had remixed and repackaged them, creating versions that were trendier and in sync with the times. 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