Zohrabai Ambalewali

She was born in Ambala in 1918 and trained in classical music under Ustad Ghulam Hussain Khan and later Ustad Nasir Hussain Khan; she was recording for HMV as a teenager in the early 1930s, and sang on radio. Her film career began in the late 1930s and took off with Naushad, who used her deep, trained voice in Rattan, Anmol Ghadi (Udan Khatole Pe Ud Jaoon) and Shahjehan, and with Ghulam Haider.

After about 1950 the fashion changed decisively towards the lighter Lata style and her assignments stopped. She continued to sing classical music and ghazals privately and on radio, and withdrew from films entirely. Her daughter Roshan Kumari became a well-known Kathak dancer. She died in Bombay in 1990.

Her recordings are fewer on official channels than her reputation would suggest, but the Rattan songs are preserved and still widely played.

Zohrabai's voice was low, strong and darkly coloured, with the open, chest-based production of a classical singer and a heavy vibrato — the opposite of what Lata brought a few years later. In the 1940s this was the sound of the serious film song, and Naushad used it for the village heroine's longing and the court dancer's lament alike.