Mellifluous melodies: my favorite Shamshad Begum songs

Shamshad Begum The name conjures up images of golden classics, old-fashioned fun songs, and a nasal voice that may be out of fashion now, but never seems dated. She started her career singing for radio Lahore in 1937. From there to singing for movies was but a short step. She recorded her first film-song for music director Ghulam Haider in the Punjabi film Yamla Jatt (1940), and her career as a popular playback singer was launched! She went on to give us hundreds of popular songs in her lovely earthy voice with its distinctive nasal twang. And she is perhaps the only female singers to have provided playback for leading men – she sang for Shammi Kapoor (Bluffmaster) and Biswajit (Kismat)!

For a singer without any formal musical training, she had an amazing vocal range and command over her voice. I love her folksy songs best, but there is no denying that she shone at every genre she handled – from the "Western" Meri jaan sunday ke sunday, to the haunting Dharti ko aakash pukare and the numerous peppy numbers that have been remixed ad infinitum in more recent times. Her biggest hits were from the 40s, most of which I’m not very familiar with. But even limiting myself to her 50s songs, I still had lots of great songs to choose from! The only way I could limit myself to “ten favorites” was by listing the first ten songs that came to mind – though even then it was a tough job since I did want to include some of her 40s songs and some of her lesser known numbers. And here is my list, in all its freshly edited glory (the songs are included in this youtube playlist):