Asha Bhosle in Carnegie Hall

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An Unseen Songbird in a Thousand Spectacles Enters the Spotlight

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/arts/music/02desai.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1144022295-2Fcg2LCIuuNJ/Id1+yZjkQ

By ANUJ DESAI
Published: April 2, 2006

Pop stardom usually comes in a youthful, toned package, one dressed in clothes that leave little to the imagination. But that’s of no consequence to Asha Bh osle. The sari-wearing 72-year-old Indian, considered a living legend by just a few hundred million people, has developed an American pop following, in collaborations with Michael Stipe and Boy George, as the subject of the Cornershop song “Brimful of Asha” and now, she hopes, with a new album called “Love Supreme” (Times Square Records). On Saturday, she will play Carnegie Hall.

But it’s her movie career, as a playback singer in Bollywood, that has made hers among the most recorded voices ever (another belongs to her older sister, Lata Mangeshkar). “The nearest equivalent we have in the United States is probably Elvis,” said David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, for whom Ms. Bhosle sang on the album “You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs From R. D. Burman’s Bollywood.”

As an ever-changing array of Bollywood heroines dance and lip-sync to the sound of her voice, Ms. Bhosle (whose name is pronounced AH-shah BOHS-lay) undergoes more makeovers in a year than Madonna will in a lifetime. Over the decades, she has had to sound coquettish, ethereal or matronly while channeling royal courtesans, cabaret stars or stoned hippies. “If singing sad songs,” Ms. Bhosle said by telephone from her home in Mumbai recently, “you have to cry.”

Indeed, the best playback singers act with their voice. Range is more critical than a set of pipes. The large majority of Ms. Bhosle’s work has been recorded live, sometimes with orchestras. Ms. Bhosle credits her father, a well-known musician and dramatist, for emphasizing a thespian’s approach to singing. If you don’t act, he told her, the song turns out flat. Since the age of 11, she has applied that method to some 13,000 tunes in 18 languages. “My tongue is very flexible,” she said.

Among playback singers, she is alone in her insistence on outside experimentation. She has embraced rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and bhangra (dance music from the Punjab region), and the results have endeared her to multiple generations. She has won won multiple MTV Asia awards along with the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, India’s equivalent of the Oscar for lifetime achievement.

When Ms. Bhosle performs Bollywood songs as interpreted by the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, she will be mixing identities, as usual. Mr. Harrington has promised to dance with Ms. Bhosle onstage. Even if he backs down, she said, “inside I’m dancing.” ANUJ DES

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Re: Asha Bhosle in Carnegie Hall

Kronos says hooray for Bollywood

Kronos says hooray for Bollywood
By T.J. Medrek
Friday, April 7, 2006

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The Kronos Quartet has spent the past few decades stretching the boundaries of the traditional Western classical string quartet to include sounds of music - traditional, folk, classical, contemporary - from all over the world. Recently, first violinist David Harrington and company have turned their attention to an unlikely genre: Indian film music. The result, as heard on Kronos’ latest Nonesuch CD, “You’ve Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman’s Bollywood,” is nothing short of revelatory - and so Kronos’ sold-out appearance Sunday at the Berklee Performance Center promises to be, too.

In addition to the quartet, the concert features guest artists Zakir Hussain (tabla) and Wu Man (Chinese pipa), and stars the “Queen of Bollywood,” singer Asha Bhosle, Burman’s widow. 

“The album started out specifically as an album,” Harrington said. “But as we were in the process of making it, everyone was having such a great time we thought, ‘We just have to do this in concert.’ ” 

More and more Westerners are starting to listen to the sounds of Bollywood, the term for the Indian film industry that turns out one musical film after another. In 2002, for example, Andrew Lloyd Webber re-created the look and sound of Bollywood’s big musical numbers in “Bombay Dreams.” 

But Harrington has been mulling recording and performing Burman’s music for nearly 15 years, ever since he first heard a Burman song. Kronos recorded its first Burman track in 1998, for the CD “Caravan,” in an arrangement by Newton composer Osvaldo Golijov. Bhosle heard the recording and was photographed holding a copy of the album. 

“That was the lightbulb moment, when I saw that photo and thought it would be so wonderful someday if we got lucky enough to possibly make an album with her,” Harrington said. 

While organizing the album, Harrington listened to more than 1,000 of Burman’s 3,000 or so songs. “It became more and more evident to me that R.D. Burman is one of the most wonderful songwriters. As a songwriter, I put him in the same sentence as Gershwin, the Beatles and Schubert.”

And Harrington has just as much praise for Bhosle, a music icon in her native India.

“I’ve been told that in India she’s like Elvis, you should say Elvis to the third power,” he said. “We do not have a musician in the West heard by as many people for as long as Asha Bhosle. Statistically I think I can say for sure she is the most famous musician in the world.” 

World Music presents Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle on Sunday at the Berklee Performance Center. The performance is sold out; call 617-876-4275 for last-minute information.

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/musicNews/view.bg?articleid=133939&format=&page=1