Peenaz Masani, "Shehzadi Tarannum" Options

[swarapriya]

Peenaz Masani

Apparently Peenaz didn’t even knew Urdu that well when she decided to be a ghazal singer. But since 1981, when she entered the ghazal field, she churned out nearly 30 albums to her credit, averaging little over a one a year. She cut ghazal albums, pop albums, sang in movies, and toured the world either giving concerts or as a goodwill ambassador in behalf of the Government of India. She sang in10 different languages.

She had three gold discs and a platinum disc. She was most recently awarded Padma Shri (last month) by the Government of India. The government of UP bestowed her with the title of “Shehzadi Tarannum� in recognition of her ghazal singing. In India alone she gave over 500 solo performances. In 1992 a book of her ghazals was published.

Here is her discography (this may not be complete).

In the next few weeks we will explore Peenaz’s albums. I am starting this thread at Erum Hashmi’s suggestion. Because I have only a limited number of albums, she will be contributing to this thread as well. If anyone can forward by uploading some of her albums, you are very much welcome to do so. I will let you know when I run out of albums.

[swarapriya]

Life Story Vol. 1

Peenaz was fortunate to have a guru in Madhurani. Under her Peenaz learned ghazal singing skills. It is fascinating that Madhurani never attained recognition or fame apparently everyone in the ghazal singing field felt she deserved. She was a close associate and disciple of Begum Akhtar. She travelled on her concert tours extensively. In an inteview the famous ghazal singer Jagjit Singh says she was his colleague and he always thought that she was a superior singer and her work reflected excellence. He regretted that she never made it to the top.

Name of Madhurani is so obscure that it is difficult to find much about her work except she has one album called "Intezaar". It has an introduction by Dilip Kumar. I happen to have three of the ghazals from this album. I can share them if someone is interested. Searching for her filmwork turns out that she sang only for one movie, "Alaap" in 1977, for the great maestro Jaidev. She sang two songs in that movie; "Nai Ri Lagan" (3 min 56 secs) with Faiyyaz & Yesudas and the second song was "Mata Saraswati Sharada" (3 min 29 secs) with Dilraj Kaur & Yesudas as cosingers.

Peenaz's "Life Story" consists of 20 songs. Most of these appeared in other albums. I will present them in four installments based on the music directors. I will present them separated by few days. This first set consists of six ghazals for which music was composed by Peenaz's guru Madhurani. Here is a description of these ghazals and the ghazals themselves ...

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Apr 7 2009, 08:59 PM