The thing about the past is that it never comes back and yet never really leaves. Shamshad Begum for instance is not just a Wikipedia note with a birthday and a death day. She is a memory for those of us who grew up with her songs. Though for all purposes, the woman who sang those songs was as invisible to us as Mubarak Begum who continues to struggle with anonymity and neglect (read more about her here…http://unboxedwriters.com/2012/09/searching-for-mubarak-begum/). As do many mascots of a certain era.Mascots we remember only when someone passes away and it is time to pen a hurried tribute. Sometimes so hurried that we mix names and people as happened with her when in 2004, several publications reported Shamshad Begum’s death, before it was established that the Begum in question was in fact Saira Banu’s grandmother and had died in 1998 !
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I always wonder about Shamshad Begum though. It is always tough for a woman to own her own voice without apology in playback singing. She has to blend with given parametres, to play the role assigned to the heroine, to stay confined in certain checked boxes but here was this woman, singing always the song she was born to sing. In a voice that reminded you of a bird perched on the highest branch of a flowering tree and singing to the heavens.
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If Punjabi folk singer Surinder Kaur’s famous cry of “daachi waleya‘ was sweet and entreating…Shamshad Begum’s rendition of the same melody reminded one of a plaintive koyal with a ‘huuk‘ in her pulsing voice (Kahe Koyal Shor Machaye Re). Shamshad’s voice had the texture of rough velvet, depth, lilt, character, sweetness, salt, pepper, silk and steel. She reminded you not of sound proof studios but golden fields swaying with the breeze, of monsoon clouds bursting open, of ocean surf and laughing brooks. She was the voice of abandon, joy, celebration, freedom, defiance and effortless strength.
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And that is the reason no matter who she sang with, hers was the voice you remembered..the voice that became the song. Be it Kajra Mohabbatwala or Reshmi Salwar Kurta Jaali Ka or Teri Mehfil Mein Kismat Aazma Kar Hum Bhi Dekhenge or Leke Pehla Pehla Pyar. It was not about technique or sur taal, this charisma. She was afterall untutored.It was simply that when Shamshad Begum sang, she knew no fear, recognised no other note except the one she was to sing.
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And yet the dichotomy. The woman with the fearless voice clipped her cinematic ambitions before they could soar and promised her father that she would never face the camera. Yet, hers was a life of choice rather than compromise. She married for love in her teens and continued to sing songs that many generations later would be remixed and remembered. Yes, time forgot her, as did we when a different era, demanding a different kind of singing phased her out.
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But even today, when you replay her, she brings it all back. The village fairs, the gaadiwala racing the sun, the dulhaniya about to join her beloved, the street singer, the folk dancer, the bar girl in Awara dancing to the tune of, “Ek Do Teen..Aaja Mausam Hai Rangeen,” the girl calling her piya in Rangoon, the majestic Nigar Sultana in Mughal-E-Azam who was willing to take her chances with life and love.
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She took her chances too and ran away with them and whether we remembered her or not, she was always herself..the one and only, timelessly unique Shamshad Begum.
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In Shamshad Begum’s is embedded the cultural memory of an epoch. Times of unhurried grace. She always evoked a sweetness combined with elegant sound for me. I didn’t know she was Saira Bano’s grandmother, thanks for this info and acknowledging the quiet courage of this iconic singer
Thanks niilofur, but she was’nt Saira Bano’s grandmother, It was falsely believed that that she was and had died in 1994!