Asgari Bai

 

Documentary on Asgari Bai, the rare exponent of Dhrupad in Hindustani Classical music. Dhrupad is one of the ancient ragas in classical music and as far my limited knowledge of listening to Dhrupad, i have heard only male singers rendering it, most famous being the Dagar brothers. Asgari Bai was a court musician during the royal times in the pre Independence India. She became the main singer of the Orchha dynasty in the Bundelkhand region. By the time this documentary was made, she was quite old, 86 years of age, and the best years were behind her. There were no performance by her during the documentary nor are there very many youtube videos of her singing. One link i got in youtube was this one

Documentary is nicely made by Brahmand Singh, the doyen of documentary film makers in India. You can watch the documentary at this link