Indubala Devi... Thumari Tilang

Indubala's mother was Rajabala, who along with sister Matibala and brother Tinkary worked in Motilal Bose's The Great Bengal Circus, also known as Bose's Circus or Professor Bose's Circus.Indubala was born in Novenber, 1899 at Amritsar, where the circus party had gone for performance. Indu was born premature and Dr. Bidhumukhi Basu was taken to Amritsar from Calcutta to attend to Rajabala.
Indubala's first training in music was from her mother. The initial plan was to train Indu as a nurse and she was admitted as a trainee in a hospital in the Pataldanga locality of Calcutta. Indu did not take fancy in the job and ran away from the hospital, much to the disappointment of her mother, who never wanted her only daughter to be forced into a life of indignity. After this incident Indubala's musical training started.
In later years she took training from Girin Chakraborty, Kamal Dasgupta, Subal Dasgupta, Jamiruddin Khan and Kazi Nazrul Islam. In time she came to be one of the major exponents of Nazrul songs and her songs along with those of Miss Angurbala and Kamala Jharia are still referred to for authenticity of lyrics and tunes of Nazrul songs. In 1916, Indubala recorded her first songs.
As a playback singer she lent her voice in films like Alibaba (1937), Chandragupt (1934) in Hindi, Ab E Hayat (1933) in Urdu and Dil Ki Pyaas (1935) also in Urdu. She did not act in these four films. Indubala did not receive any major award apart from the Gold Disc given on behalf of His Master's Voice. The government of India never considered her name for any award. The Sangeet Natak Academy however honoured her with a lifetime achievement award in 1975. The government of West Bengal, India however did arrange for a pension for which a lot of running about had to be done.
The end came on the thirtieth day of November, 1984 after a prolonged illness during which again Dr. Badhan Sengupta looked after her as his own mother. Perhaps by coincidence her friend Angurbala died the same year.
Ref. IMDB (The Internet Movie Database)

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• Indubala
• Devi
• Thumari
• Tilang

[SHIVCHACHA]

Thank you Mirza ji, what a gem you found.

Though never heard this but it is superb.

[ambindia]

i assure you this is tilang. people do mix in bits of khamaj when singing tilang but this is unmistakeably tilang.

[jasiddiqi]

Thank you so very much. As ever, I'm very grateful to you for sharing such rare beauties with us all. I only hear pure Tillang here -- did somebody mention Khamaj? I don't think so!

[Adyamaaa]

Thank you . We never heard apart from the name often! Its our treasure for all the music lovers of the world.

[kk10061]

mirza ap kaun hai kaya kar rehe hai . but one thing is there what you have done uploading old thumri recital songs gazalzs it is a god;act bless you bless you bless you sir i bow my head

[lifeline506]

she is tigress of bengal .....

[banauli]

wah ....

[arifkhan100]

what a treasure from the past!

[varunachar87]

Nice piece. Please note that this is not Tilang at all. It is closer to Khamaaj, although I don't know what exactly it is.

[vinaypande]

yes got it many tx i thought you meant a radio channel on fm!