Vidya Shah recalls feeling vaguely insulted by the words accompanying a gift she received right after a concert in the spring of 2008. An elderly audience member had walked up to the Hindustani vocalist and handed her two mixtapes with the words: “Yeh suno, yeh hai asli gana” (listen to this, this is real music).
The inlay card, however, did something to assuage her pique. On it were names of women singers from the earliest 78RPM era, of whom she knew only two – the ageless Mallika Pukhraj and the star Gauhar Jaan. But who were Kitijaan, Umda Jaan, Kajjanbai or Kamala Jharia?
“The quality of the sound on the tape was really bad, but I was very taken by the familiarity of some of the music,” recalled Shah. “I knew many of the bandishes and ghazals. But there were many I didn’t know either. What was I to make of the boldness of some of the lyrics? For example, the ghazal Tum ek bosa karo inayat [bestow upon me a kiss] by Bai Sunderabai. Who were these women? Who were their ustads? Where did they come from? How did they navigate the hierarchies of gender and status? And what kind of agency did...
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