Shamshad Begum, Unseen Singer of Indian Film, Dies at 94
By HARESH PANDYA
Published: April 27, 2013
Shamshad Begum, a star singer in India during the early years of Hindi cinema, died on Tuesday at her home in Mumbai. She was 94. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Usha Ratra.
Ms. Begum was one of the first female playback singers in Hindi cinema — singers who are heard but not seen on screen, with actresses lip-syncing to the recorded voices. She was in great demand throughout the 1940s and remained popular even as another singer, Lata Mangeshkar, became the dominant playback singer of the 1950s.
“I could never achieve the kind of popularity, stardom and respect she enjoyed,” Ms. Mangeshkar said in an interview.
Shamshad Begum was born on April 14, 1919, in Amritsar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, and grew up in Lahore, which was then in India and is now in Pakistan. One of 12 children of orthodox Muslim parents, she displayed a talent for singing at an early age but was discouraged by her father from studying music.
Her career began when a leading music company signed her at 13 after a successful audition for the composer Ghulam Haider. Her father allowed her to sing professionally only after she promised that she would wear a burqa to the recording studio and never attend functions or parties. Ms. Begum kept her word even after her marriage, at 15, to Ganpatlal Batto, a lawyer who was also an amateur photographer.
Early in her career she sang at weddings and religious functions as well as on records and on the radio.
“Most of what I sang in those days was non-film stuff, because the talkies had just started in 1931 and not too many songs were incorporated in films in the first few years,” Ms. Begum said in a rare interview a few years ago. She sang for a string of Punjabi films before going to Mumbai to work on her first Hindi film, “Khazanchi” (1941). Among the many other films for which she sang were “Aar Paar” (1954) and “C.I.D.” (1956), both well known to Indian audiences.
Ms. Begum shunned publicity and lived a quiet life after her husband’s death in 1955. She is survived by her daughter.
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