Interview with Asha Bhosle

Bollywood cinema might be a celebration of passion and unrequited love - albeit without any physical demonstrations of the same and always with a happy ending - but in this multibillion-dollar industry it is often the singers, not the actors, that garnish the greatest acclaim.

Sure, the actors can deliver their lines, dance up a storm and lip-sync to the music, but it is the performances by so-called "playback singers" that can make or break a film. Of all the playback singers, there can only be one queen, and the crown belongs to Asha Bhosle.

Bhosle has no idea how many songs she has sung, but the 73-year-old grandmother has more than 12,500 titles to her name, including collaborations with players as diverse as Code Red, Michael Stipe and, well, Brett Lee. Her music has been sampled by both the Black Eyed Peas and Nelly Furtado.

It's a colourful career trajectory for an artist who began singing, aged four, with the musicians who gathered in her father's Mumbai lounge room each weekend to practise. Years of classical singing lessons followed, and then, lured by the glamour of Bollywood, Bhosle took to the screen.

"There are so many different styles of singing that are used in Hindi films,'' she says. ''Ghazaal singing and classical, it isn't just about pop, and the actresses were so beautiful that I wanted to work with them and give them my voice. I was fascinated by the film industry."

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After more than 14,000 recordings and a career spanning six decades, legendary Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle still considers herself a student of music.

Born in 1933 in Goa, she has sung thousands of hits in several Indian languages, which have garnered her innumerable awards.

Bhosle gained global renown through world tours, concerts and performances with international artists such as Boy George, the Grammy-award winning Kronos Quartet and British band Cornershop, who paid tribute to her with their 1999 song "Brimful of Asha".

Recently she zoomed to the top of the Indian music charts with her album "Asha and Friends" featuring blonde Australian cricketer Brett Lee and macho Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt.

After losing her father at the age of 9, Bhosle started acting and singing in films with her more illustrious sister Lata Mangeshkar to support her family.

A failed first marriage did not deter her -- she brought up her three children as well as pursuing her singing career. She remarried famous Bollywood composer Rahul Dev Burman in 1980.

Bhosle's big break in Bollywood came in 1957 when she sung tracks for the film "Naya Daur" (New Age). Now 73, Bhosle has no plans of quitting the industry.

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