Indubala

Indubala (1898 – 30 November 1984), sometimes credited as Miss Indubala, Indubālā Debī, or Indubala Devi, was a Bengali singer and actress. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1975.

Indubala
A South Asian woman with a bindi; her dark waved hair is partly covered by a light-colored dupatta
Indubala, from a 1936 issue of The Indian Listener
Born1898
Amritsar, India
Died30 November 1984 (aged approximately 83)
Kolkata, India
Other namesIndubālā Debī, Miss Indubala, Indu Bala
Occupation(s)Singer and actress

Early life

Indubala was born in Amritsar, the daughter of Motilal Bose and Rajabala. Her parents were with the Great Bengal Circus,[1] and separated soon after her birth. She lived with her mother in Calcutta. She trained as a singer in Calcutta with several teachers, including Gauhar Jaan,[2] Kamal Dasgupta, and Kazi Nazrul Islam.[3]

Career

Indubala is considered one of the great Bengali women singers.[4][5] She made her first of hundreds of recordings for Gramaphone Records in 1915 or 1916.[6][7] She performed on stage with her mother's company, the Rambagan Female Kali Theatre,[8] and at the Star Theatre. She sang on All India Radio beginning in 1927, on the broadcaster's second day on the air, and regularly through the 1930s.[9] In 1936 she was appointed court musician to the Maharaja of Mysore.[10] Beginning in the 1930s she provided playback vocals for sound films, and she acted on-screen in more than two dozen films, including Rajrani Meera (1933), Sati Sulochana (1934), and Naveena Sarangadhara (1936).[11] She retired from the stage in 1950. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1975.[1]

Indubala lived most of her life in the Rambagan neighborhood of Calcutta,[12] and was concerned for the welfare of the actresses and sex workers concentrated in that district. "I am Rambagan's Indu," she declared. "Here I have learnt music, established myself, and got respect."[8]

Personal life

After several years of declining health, Indubala died in 1984, in Calcutta, in her mid-eighties.[3] She is one of the title characters of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's short story "Einstein and Indubala" (2016).[13] In 2020 a compilation album of Indubala's recordings was released on vinyl, by Tara Disc.[14]

References
  1. Chakrabarti, Kunal; Chakrabarti, Shubhra (22 August 2013). Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis. Scarecrow Press. pp. 232–233. ISBN 978-0-8108-8024-5.
  2. Gupta, Debdutta (17 January 2020). "Indubala Devi – the singing sensation of 1915 Calcutta!". Get Bengal. Retrieved 14 November 2021.
  3. Guha, Jyoti Prakash (2008). "A short biography of Indubala" (PDF). The Record News: 35–50.
  4. Murshid, Ghulam (25 January 2018). Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years. Niyogi Books. ISBN 978-93-86906-12-0.
  5. Bhattacharya, Rimli (15 May 2018). Public Women in British India: Icons and the Urban Stage. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-01655-4.
  6. Denning, Michael (1 August 2015). Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78168-857-1.
  7. Joshi, G. N. (1988). "A Concise History of the Phonograph Industry in India". Popular Music. 7 (2): 147–156. doi:10.1017/S0261143000002725. ISSN 0261-1430. JSTOR 853533. S2CID 161788875.
  8. Chakraborti, Bikas (2014). "Mirabai and Indubala: Spiritual Empowerment Redefined". In Banerjee, Debalina (ed.). Boundaries of the Self: Gender, Culture and Spaces. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 127–139, quote on page 138. ISBN 9781443860789.
  9. "Miss Indubala". The Indian Listener. 6: 11. 22 December 1940.
  10. "Books Reviewed" The Indian Listener (22 September 1936): 952.
  11. Dickey, Sara; Dudrah, Rajinder (24 October 2018). South Asian Cinemas: Widening the Lens. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-97729-2.
  12. Purkayastha, Prarthana (2021). "Outing Pleasure and Indulgence: Indubala's Scrapbook and the Red-Light Dances of Calcutta". Contemporary Theatre Review. 31 (1–2): 14–33. doi:10.1080/10486801.2021.1878502. ISSN 1048-6801. S2CID 234783392.
  13. Ravi, S. (20 April 2016). "Tales that continue to rankle". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  14. Discogs, Miss Indubala – Miss Indubala (1889-1984) (2020, Vinyl), retrieved 15 November 2021
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