AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Asha Bhosle has died. By her own account, she recorded about 12,000 songs over eight decades, many of them for Indian films. She was the voice of Bollywood, matched only by her sister, Lata Mangeshkar. Back in 2010, reporter Jeff Lunden profiled Asha Bhosle for NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
ASHA BHOSLE AND LATA MANGESHKAR: (Singing in non-English language).
JEFF LUNDEN: Those are the sisters in a duet from the 1950s. Journalist Aseem Chhabra says Asha and Lata, who had something of a sibling rivalry, also had very different vocal styles and personalities.
ASEEM CHHABRA: Lata always portrayed herself as this very pure, kind of clean woman, and also the songs that she sang were always that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KABHI KABHI")
LATA MANGESHKAR: (Singing in non-English language).
CHHABRA: Asha sang naughty songs, and she had somewhat of a naughty personality, and she had her personal life also had some naughtiness in it, the fact that she had run away from home and divorces and marriage and all of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PIYA TU AB TO AAJA")
ASHA BHOSLE: (Singing in non-English language).
CHANG: Writer Lavanya Shah said Asha Bhosle became a liberating figure for women across India.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
LAVANYA SHAH: She was a liberated female long ago (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DUM MARO DUM II")
BHOSLE: (Singing in non-English language).
SHAH: In India, in villages, women would sit and clean the grain or grind chiles, and they would sing songs. Those kind of songs Asha Tia (ph) sung, and they have become so popular that every Indian female - she feels that it is part of my growing up, and it is part of my life also.
CHANG: That was reporting for NPR from Jeff Lunden. Asha Bhosle was 92 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DUM MARO DUM II")
BHOSLE: (Singing in non-English language). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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