Legendary Singer Asha Bhosle Passes Away at 92 |
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New Delhi: With the passing of Asha Bhosle, the last musical link with the Golden Age of Hindi cinema has been severed.
She sang her first song for a Marathi film Maajha Bal in 1943 at the age of 10 after her musician father Dinanath Mangeshkar passed away when she was just 9 years old.
Her son Anand Bhosle confirmed her passing to reporters on Sunday afternoon (April 12) and said that her last rites will be performed at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park on Monday.
“My mother passed away today. People can pay their last respects to her at 11 am tomorrow at Casa Grande, Lower Parel, where she lived. Her last rites will be performed at 4 pm tomorrow at Shivaji Park,” he said.
Also read: Asha Bhosle Passes Away at 92: Ten of Her Timeless Gems
Bhosle was taken to Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital on Saturday due to “extreme exhaustion” and a chest infection, according to her granddaughter Zanai Bhosle. Hospital management said on Sunday that she passed away due to multi organ failure.
“Asha Bhosale breathed her last today in Breach Candy Hospital. She passed away due to multi-organ failure,” Dr Pratit Samdani at Breach Candy Hospital was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
Bhosle’s first Hindi film song was in Chunariya (1948), and it set off a phenomenal career that lasted over seven decades. Her first solo song came a year after.
At the age of 16, she married a much older Ganpatrao Bhosle, who was 31 at the time, but she still needed to work. In a space dominated by strong women singers such as her sister Lata Mangeshkar, and others like Shamshad Begum and Geeta Dutt, Asha Bhosle initially got assignments with the second and third rung of music directors.
It was her partnership with O.P. Nayyar in 1952 and onwards that gave her prominence. Nayyar was the new kid on the block, composing refreshing new music which made him popular with a younger generation. He had sworn he would never use Lata Mangeshkar because she had once turned him down. He composed songs that are much remembered today, and all of them were with his muse, Asha Bhosle.
Other prominent music directors such as S.D. Burman, Ravi (Ravi Shankar Sharma) and then new sensation, R.D. Burman. In fact, it was young Burman that she partnered with after her musical relationship with Nayyar ended in 1972. She reached a zenith with her rendition of Urdu ghazals in Umrao Jaan, under the baton of Khayyam. She won the National Award for her work in the film.
By then she had already won 7 Filmfare Awards. In 2000, she received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. In 2008, she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second highest civilian honour. In 2011, she was recognised by the Guinness World Records as the most recorded artist in music history.
Bhosle was also nominated for two Grammy awards.
She has also recorded songs in several Indian languages apart from Marathi and Bengali, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. She was nothing if not adventurous.
In the 1980s and 1990s, she collaborated with international stars like Boy George, Kronos Quartet and British group Cornershop. Till very recentlyago, she used to sing in live concerts.
Bhosle’s final song, The Shadowy Light, was in collaboration with the English band Gorillaz. It released on February 27, 2026.