Rajkumari Dubey

Infobox musical artist
Name = Rajkumari


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Birth_name = Rajkumari Dubey
Alias =
Born = 1924 British India
Died = 2000 India
Instrument = Vocalist
Voice_type =
Genre = playback singing
Occupation = Singer
Years_active = 1949-1977

Rajkumari Dubey (1924 - 2000), better known by her first name, was an Indian playback singer.

Biography

Rajkumari was born in 1924. She never really had the opportunity to learn to sing, but was always supported by her family. She was just 10 years old when she recorded her first song for HMV in 1934 and she started her career as a stage artiste. Vijay Bhatt and Shankar Bhatt of Prakash Pictures spotted her during one of her shows. They liked her voice and persuaded her to discontinue acting on stage as it would spoil her voice (In those days, there were no mikes and you had to shout to be heard). So she quit theatre, and became an employee of Prakash Pictures as an actress and singer.

Rajkumari's first film with them was a Hindi-Gujarati bilingual called "Sansar Leela Nayi Duniya". She got important roles in films like "Aankh Ka Tara" and "Turki Sher" (1933). She was the heroine "Bhakt Ke Bhagwan" and "Insaaf Ki Topi" (1934). In those days she often acted opposite Zakaria Khan (late actor Amjad Khan's father, whose screen name was Jayant). She also used to sing for popular music director Lallubhai. She began getting fed up with having to watch on her figure and decided to stick to just singing as a career. After she quit Prakash Pictures, she began playback singing for actresses like Ratnamala, Shobhana Samarth, etc. and soon she became the First Female Playback Singer of Indian Cinema.

She sang many Gujarati and Punjabi songs. Even though she was not trained to sing, she was very good at picking up what her composers taught her. They thought she was a trained singer! She was able to also establish herself as a classical singer and excelled in singing and voice production within the framework of classical forms of thumri and dadra. Among her peers were Shamshad Begum, Zohrabai Ambalewali, Juthika Roy, Zeenat Begum, etc. Both Shamshad and Zohrabai had resounding voices with a high range, while Rajkumari had a soft voice with a small range. She sang quite a few songs with Mukesh. She did not get much opportunity to sing with Mohammed Rafi - mainly because Lata Mangeshkar was a fast upcoming singer at the time. She sang with Noor Jehan in "Naukar" (1943). She never sang with K. C. Dey, but she did sing songs composed by him, as well a his nephew, Manna Dey.

Rajkumari was married very late in life. Her husband was V.K. Dubey who was from Benares (Uttar Pradesh) where he spent a lot of his time (because he owned a shop there), while she settled in Bombay. He later joined her in Bombay.

Later, she would go on to sing songs for "Neel Kamal", a Raj Kapoor and Madhubala starrer, and "Hulchul" (1951); but her two most famous films would be "Bawre Nain" (1950) and "Mahal" (1949), where she sang for the Indian actress Madhubala. By this time however Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle had shot to fame, relegating most other female singers in the industry to the sidelines. Rajkumari endured a long dry spell until music director Naushad spotted her singing in the chorus for his background score for "Pakeezah" (1972). Naushad was much taken aback by this, having greatly respected her in her heyday, and heartbroken to hear that she was reduced to singing in the chorus to make ends meet. As a result, he gave her an entire song to herself in Pakeezah, "Najariya ki Mari". Her last film song was recorded for R.D. Burman in the film "Kitaab". She died in poverty in early 2000.