ABSTRACT

This chapter attempts to read sonic journeys that link women singers from South Asia with technologies of sound reproduction, cinema and mobile imaginations. What singers like Gauhar Jaan had in common with Noor Jehan was a life of mobility, mediation and cosmopolitanism. The chapter considers the mediated landscape from the mid-1970s to the 1980s to suggest that by forming dense cultural networks with women singers across national boundaries, the film industry created new socialities of musical performance that carried with them memories of the pre-Partition era. It highlights the material, technological and industrial practices of cinema – mainly the arrival of playback technology and sophisticated microphones that enabled women singers from middle-class families to enter the Bombay film industry. The separation of the aural from the visual, effected through the playback system, allowed female playback singers to distance themselves from the lyrical import of the songs.