Part V.2 : The Thumri and Tappa Traditions, and the Women Who Carried Them

The purab-ang thumri and its neighbouring forms (tappa, dadra, kajri, chaiti, hori and jhoola) constitute the second great body of Hindustani vocal music, and for a century and a half they were carried, composed, taught and handed on overwhelmingly by women. The tawaifs of Banaras, Lucknow, Gaya, Allahabad and Calcutta were not a demi-monde attached to the tradition; they were the tradition, in its most widely heard form. They employed the sarangi players, commissioned the compositions, trained the next generation, and, when the gramophone arrived in 1902, they were the artists it recorded first, because they were the artists the public wanted.

Between roughly 1890 and 1950 that world was dismantled: by the anti-nautch campaign and colonial morality; by post-independence legislation and All India Radio’s exclusion, under B. V. Keskar, of musicians from backgrounds deemed disreputable; and by the respectability project of the reformers, who recast Hindustani music as a Hindu devotional and national art and had every reason to disown its erotic and its professional-Muslim past. The repertoire survived; the women who owned it very largely did not. Many died in poverty: Gauhar Jaan a palace pensioner at Mysore, Rasoolan Bai destitute in Allahabad, Zarina Begum in a rented room in Lucknow.

What follows is the fullest roster assembled as a tribute to these women of mettle who lived and dies for the sake of Art. Because these lineages ran through households rather than gharanas, and because the documentary record is thin by design, several entries carry no firm dates. That absence is itself part of the history, and it is left visible rather than filled in.

The Male Composers and Teachers of the Thumri Line

The most consequential patron-composer of the line was Nawab Wajid Ali Shah ‘Akhtar Piya’ (1822–1887) of Awadh, who shaped the bol-banav thumri of Lucknow and carried it to Calcutta’s Metiabruz after his deposition in 1856. Beside him stand the nineteenth-century Lucknow chhaps Sadiq Ali Shah, Qadar Piya, Lallan Piya and Sanad Piya (identifications contested). From the dance side came Pandit Bindadin Maharaj (c. 1830–1918) of Lucknow kathak, who with his brother Pandit Kalka Prasad founded the Kalka-Bindadin gharana and composed the vast body of thumri and bol-bant texts, made for danced abhinaya, on which Lucknow thumri singing still rests. The Banaras teachers of the courtesan singers were Pandit Thakur Prasad Mishra, Pandit Shambhunath Mishra (sarangi) and Pandit Chhote Ramdas ji. Rasoolan Bai’s gurus were Ustad Shammu Khan, Ustad Ashiq Khan and Ustad Najju Khan; Siddheshwari Devi’s first guru was Pandit Siyaji Maharaj (sarangi). Jaddanbai learned from Ustad Moinuddin Khan, the Banaras thumri specialist, and Zohrabai from her father Ustad Ahmad Khan (sarangi, Agra). In Gaya the corresponding figures were the mid-nineteenth-century instrumentalists Hanumandas ji, Kanhai Lal Dhendhi and Soni Maharaj.

The Great Women of Banaras and the Purab Ang

The earliest of the Banaras figures whose reputation still stands is Vidyadhari Bai (c. 1880s–1940s), the acknowledged doyenne of Banaras tappa before Badi Moti Bai and the standard against which Husna Bai and Badi Moti Bai were measured; her dates are not recorded in any accessible source. Husna Bai, also known as Husna Jan (dates unrecorded; active from at least the 1880s into the 1920s), sang in Banaras, trained by Thakur Prasad Mishra and Pandit Shambhunath Mishra and, in tappa, by Chhote Ramdas ji, and her repertoire covered khayal, thumri and tappa. She founded the Tawaif Sabha during the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22, the first collective organisation of courtesan-musicians in India, and drove nationalist and Swadeshi song into the mehfil, thereby making performance a route to social legitimacy for women artists rather than an obstacle to it. She collaborated with Bharatendu Harishchandra. That a figure of this consequence has no confirmed dates is the single largest documentary gap in this roster. Kashi Bai, also of Banaras, was one of the five singers of the canonical Banaras thumri anthology, alongside Badi Moti Bai, Rasoolan Bai, Siddheshwari Devi and Janki Bai.

Rasoolan Bai (1902–1974) sang in Banaras, later in Ahmedabad, and ended destitute in Allahabad. Trained from the age of five by Ustad Shammu Khan and then by the sarangiyas Ashiq Khan and Najju Khan, she sang romantic purab-ang thumri, tappa, dadra, poorbi geet, hori, kajri and chaiti. She dominated Hindustani vocal music for five decades and was called the doyenne of the Banaras gharana; she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1957. She taught Naina Devi, and Ustad Bismillah Khan named her and her sister Batoolan Bai as the models on which he built his shehnai style, which is the strongest single piece of evidence for the tawaifs’ part in shaping Banaras instrumental music. Her 1935 recording Lagat karejwa mein chot is the emblematic purab-ang thumri, and she is the subject of Saba Dewan’s documentary The Other Song (2009).

Siddheshwari Devi (1908–1977) was likewise a Banaras singer, trained by Pandit Siyaji Maharaj and then by Bade Ramdas ji, her principal guru, with further study under Rajab Ali Khan of Dewas and Inayat Khan of Lahore. She sang thumri above all, with khayal, dhrupad, dadra, tappa, kajri, chaiti, hori and bhajan, and she was called ‘Thumri Queen’; she received the Padma Shri in 1966 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. She taught bhajan to M. S. Subbulakshmi and is the subject of Mani Kaul’s film Siddheshwari (1989). More than anyone else she converted Banaras thumri from a courtesan idiom into concert-hall art.

Badi Moti Bai (1917–1985), also of Banaras, sang in a deep, resonant, weight-bearing style and was the last full-scale exponent of Banaras tappa in the tawaif line; she too received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. Her counterpart in delicacy was Chhoti Moti Bai.

Girija Devi ‘Appaji’ (1929–2017) worked in Varanasi and Kolkata. Trained by Pandit Sarju Prasad Misra from the age of five and then by Pandit Chand Misra until the early 1960s, she sang purab-ang thumri, khayal, tappa, kajri, chaiti, hori and folk. Known as the ‘Queen of Thumri’, she made her AIR Allahabad debut in 1949 and gave her first public concert in 1951, taught on the faculty of the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in the 1980s and at Banaras Hindu University in the early 1990s, and received the Padma Shri in 1972, the Padma Bhushan in 1989, the Padma Vibhushan in 2016 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1977. She is the decisive figure of the modern era: the first woman from a non-courtesan Banaras household to make thumri a mainstream concert career, and so the person who moved the repertoire out of the tawaif economy and into the modern institution.

The hereditary line ran on one generation further in Savita Devi, also known as Savita Maharaj (1939–2019), of Banaras and Delhi, daughter and disciple of Siddheshwari Devi, who sang thumri, dadra and ghazal. She was the sole hereditary custodian of the Siddheshwari repertoire, taught at Delhi University and founded the Siddheshwari Devi Trust; with her death the Banaras tawaif line lost its last hereditary inheritor. Bageshwari Devi, of Banaras, is the thumri singer after whom Varanasi’s annual Bageshwari Devi Thumri Festival is named, while Kamleshwari Devi and Achhan Bai are named in the city’s oral record but could not be verified against reference sources.

Among the living, Vidushi Sunanda Sharma (b. 1969), of Banaras and Delhi, is the chief ganda-bandh disciple of Girija Devi, with further learning from Pandit Kishan Maharaj and Ustad Bismillah Khan; she sings khayal, thumri, dadra, chaiti, kajri and tappa. She took up the veena at four and was performing at nine, has recorded the albums Dharohar, Swar Sanchay and Sur Ganga, and has performed at the Norwegian Parliament, in Paris and in Venice. She is the principal living inheritor of the Girija Devi thumri line. Vidushi Malini Awasthi (b. 1966), of Lucknow and Kanpur, is a ganda-bandh disciple of Girija Devi and of Ustad Rahat Ali Khan; she sings purab-ang thumri, dadra, kajri and chaiti alongside Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Bundeli and Braj folk, received the Padma Shri in 2016 and founded SONCHIRAIYA, and she has re-tied purab-ang thumri to the folk substratum from which it came. Dr. Rita Dev, of Agra, is a disciple of Girija Devi and Mahadev Prasad Mishra and is Professor and Head of Music at Agra College; she is distinct from Rita Ganguly of Delhi.

The Great Women of Allahabad, Agra and the Gramophone

Malka Jan of Agra, known as Badi Malka Jan (1855–1907), was born Victoria Hemmings and worked in Allahabad, then in Banaras from 1881 and in Calcutta from 1883, mentored in Banaras by the nobleman Khursheed. Her arts were kathak, thumri, khayal, Bengali kirtan and Urdu poetry. She was the mother and first guru of Gauhar Jaan; she kept the great cultural salon on Chitpore Road, published a diwan of Urdu verse (Makhzan-e-Ulfat-e-Malka Jan), and recorded for the Gramophone Company, and she is the matriarch of the gramophone-era tawaif world. At least three contemporaries bore the name Malka Jan and the sources do not fully disentangle them.

Gauhar Jaan (1873–1930) was born Eileen Angelina Yeoward at Azamgarh and sang in Banaras, Calcutta, Darbhanga, Madras and finally Mysore. She was trained by her mother Malka Jaan, then by Kale Khan and Kalu Ustad, by Ustad Ali Bakhsh ‘Jarnail’ of Patiala, by Bindadin Maharaj in kathak, by Srijanbai in dhrupad-dhamar and by Charan Das in Bengali kirtan, and she sang thumri, dadra, kajri, chaiti, bhajan, tarana, khayal, ghazal and Rabindra Sangeet. She was India’s first recording artist, in 1902, and its first mass-market musical celebrity, with more than six hundred sides in over ten languages between 1902 and 1920. She invented the compressed three-minute classical performance that the 78 rpm disc demanded, and the spoken sign-off as well, “My name is Gauhar Jaan!”, by which the engineers identified the wax. She inspired Begum Akhtar to choose classical training over film, and she died in poverty as a palace musician at Mysore.

Janki Bai ‘Chhappan Chhuri’ (1880–1934) was born in Benares and worked in Allahabad, trained by Ustad Hassu Khan and studying Urdu poetry under Akbar Allahabadi. She sang thumri, dadra, khayal, ghazal and kajri, made more than two hundred and fifty recordings, many selling in tens of thousands, sang for George V at the Delhi Durbar of 1911, published the diwan Diwan-e-Janki, and left a charitable trust. Her nickname, meaning fifty-six knives, came from a knife attack in her youth that left fifty-six scars, and which she reclaimed as her stage identity.

Zohrabai Agrewali (1868–1913), of Agra, was trained by her father Ustad Ahmad Khan (sarangi), by Ustad Sher Khan and Ustad Kallan Khan, and by the composer Mehboob Khan, and she sang khayal, thumri and ghazal in the Agra gharana. She was the great deep-voiced contralto of the early gramophone, with more than sixty sides for the Gramophone Company between 1908 and 1911 under exclusive contract, and a direct and acknowledged influence on Ustad Faiyaz Khan’s gayaki. With Gauhar Jaan she marks the closing era of the classical tawaif.

The Great Women of Lucknow and Awadh

Begum Akhtar, born Akhtaribai Faizabadi (1914–1974), belonged to Faizabad and Lucknow. She was trained by her mother Mushtari Sahiba, then by Ustad Imdad Khan (sarangi), Ata Mohammed Khan of Patiala, Mohammad Khan, Abdul Waheed Khan of Kirana, Ustad Jhande Khan and Anjanibai Malpekar, and she sang ghazal, dadra and thumri. Called the ‘Queen of Ghazals’, she composed nearly four hundred songs and received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1972, the Padma Shri in 1968 and the Padma Bhushan posthumously in 1975. She broke the mehfil and purdah barrier by carrying the ghazal onto the public concert platform and the radio, and she is the bridge between the tawaif mehfil and the modern ghazal concert. She died on tour in Ahmedabad, days after a performance.

Jaddanbai (1892–1949) sang in Benares and Allahabad and then in Bombay. Daughter of the Allahabad courtesan Daleepabai, she was afterwards trained by Ustad Moinuddin Khan in Banaras thumri and by Ustad Chaddu Khan, Ustad Laab Khan and Barkat Ali Khan, singing thumri, ghazal and dadra before turning to film composition. She recorded ghazals for Columbia, founded Sangeet Movietone, and became one of the first women music directors in Indian cinema. She was the mother of the actress Nargis.

Zarina Begum (1930–2018), of Lucknow, was trained by her father Shanshah Hussain, then by Ghulam Hazrat of Firangi Mahal, at the Bhatkhande Institute, and from about the age of twenty-five by Begum Akhtar; she sang baithak ghazal, thumri and dadra. Called the last of the royal court singers of Awadh, she was patronised at Sultanat Manzil and Sheesh Mahal in the 1950s and 1960s and then destitute for decades, and she was the first recipient of the Uttar Pradesh Begum Akhtar Award in 2015. Her story, preserved by the kathak dancer Manjari Chaturvedi through The Courtesan Project, is now the standard case study of how the modern Indian state failed the tawaif inheritance.

Shanti Hiranand (1932–2020), of Lucknow and Delhi, was trained by Ustad Aijaz Hussain Khan of Rampur from 1947 and then by Begum Akhtar from 1957 until her guru’s death. She sang ghazal, thumri and dadra and was the chief torchbearer of the Begum Akhtar repertoire; she received the Padma Shri in 2007 and wrote Begum Akhtar: The Story of My Ammi (2005). Rita Ganguly (b. 1934), of Delhi, is likewise a disciple of Begum Akhtar, with further training under Amir Khan and Siddheshwari Devi; she sings ghazal and thumri alongside her theatre work and her Manipuri and Kathakali training, has received the Padma Shri, wrote Ae Mohabbat: Reminiscing Begum Akhtar, and founded the Begum Akhtar Academy. Kajjan Begum, known as Miss Kajjan (c. 1915–1945), of Calcutta and Bombay, sang ghazal, soz-khwani and film song and was an early gramophone and talkie-era singer of the tawaif line.

The Great Women of Bombay, Calcutta and the Inheritors

Naina Devi, born Nilina Sen (1917–1993), worked in Calcutta, Kapurthala and Delhi. She was trained for nine years by Girija Shankar Chakravarty, then by Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan of Rampur-Sahaswan, by Rasoolan Bai and by Anjanibai Malpekar, and she sang thumri, dadra, ghazal, qawwali and kirtan. A Brahmo granddaughter of Keshab Chandra Sen, she married into the Kapurthala royal family and, widowed, took up public singing under a stage name: she is the exact hinge at which the tawaif repertoire passed to the educated bourgeoisie. She insisted on the study of nayika bheda, the eight archetypes of the heroine, as the basis of thumri interpretation. She was artistic director of Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra and a producer for AIR and Doordarshan, and she received the Padma Shri in 1974. Her disciples were Shubha Mudgal, Vidya Rao and Madhumita Ray.

Nirmala Devi (1927–1996) sang in Varanasi and then in Bombay as a disciple of Ustad Ata Mohammed Khan of Patiala, the same master who taught Begum Akhtar, having been enrolled with him by her aunt Mannan Jan, a tawaif. She sang thumri and ghazal and had a 1940s career in film acting. She was the daughter of the tabla master Vasudev Narayan Singh, the sister of the Banaras tabla player Lachhu Maharaj (1944–2016), who is not the kathak master of the same name, and the mother of bollywood film start Govinda. Her career maps the Banaras-tawaif to Bombay-film pathway exactly, and she remains one of the finest thumri voices on record.

Shobha Gurtu, born Bhanumati Shirodkar (1925–2004), came from Belgaum and then Bombay. She was trained by her mother Menekabai Shirodkar, a devadasi-lineage dancer and singer, and then by Ustad Bhurji Khan, Ustad Natthan Khan and Ustad Ghamman Khan of the Jaipur-Atrauli house, and she sang thumri, dadra, kajri and hori. She was the other ‘Thumri Queen’: she brought full-throated abhinaya and pure-classical passages into semi-classical singing and so made a new concert form. She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987 and the Padma Bhushan in 2002. Her son is the percussionist Trilok Gurtu.

Sitara Devi, born Dhanlakshmi (1920–2014), of Varanasi and Bombay, was trained by her father Pandit Sukhdev Maharaj and by Niranjan Sharma in kathak in both the Banaras and Lucknow styles, with sung thumri and abhinaya. Tagore named her Nritya Samragni at sixteen; she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in 1967 and at Carnegie Hall in 1976, and she is the clearest surviving example of the thumri-as-danced-text tradition.

Of Naina Devi’s own line, Vidya Rao, of Delhi, is a disciple of Naina Devi and later of Ustad Mahmud Dhaulpuri; she sings thumri, dadra and the poetry of Amir Khusrau and Kabir, and as a scholar-performer she is the author of Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji and Voice of the Veena and the leading academic interpreter of thumri’s gendered poetics. Shubha Mudgal (b. 1959), of Allahabad and Delhi, was trained by Ramashreya Jha, Vinay Chandra Maudgalya, Vasant Thakar, Jitendra Abhisheki and Kumar Gandharva, with thumri from Naina Devi; she sings khayal, thumri and popular crossover and received the Padma Shri in 2000. Madhumita Ray, of Delhi, is likewise a disciple of Naina Devi. Beyond the singers, Manjari Chaturvedi, the Sufi kathak dancer, is not a singer but is, through The Courtesan Project, the principal contemporary archivist and advocate of the tawaif inheritance; and Saba Dewan, through the film The Other Song (2009) and the book Tawaifnama (2019), has written its standard modern history.

The Gaya Tradition

Gaya is often listed among the gharanas, but it is properly a regional style rather than a guru-shishya lineage: a slow, languid, glide-based thumri called thah ki thumri, set in eight-beat keherwa with heavy Bhojpuri and Magahi folk colouring, derived from Banaras and sustained until the early 1950s by the patronage of the Gaywal Panda priestly families and local zamindars. Gaya’s real fame rested on tappa as much as on thumri. Its record begins with Dhela Bai, the most celebrated courtesan singer of Gaya, and with Malka Jan of Gaya, Mohammad Bandi and Panna Bai. Pandit Ramuji Mishra, also known as Ram Prasad Mishra, was the Banaras thumri singer who settled there and became the conduit for the Banaras style, and Soni Maharaj was the son of Hanumandas ji. The twentieth-century specialists were Balram Singh and Jay Ram Tiwari, and after them Pandit Govardhan Mishra (d. 2019), son of Ram Prasad Mishra and rated by Gajendra Narayan Singh the finest tappa singer in India, the last major Gaya exponent. The style is carried today by Kameshwar Pathak.

Living Exponents of the Thumri-Purab Ang Tradition (2026)

Those still performing in 2026 include Vidushi Sunanda Sharma (b. 1969), the senior-most living Girija Devi disciple; Vidushi Malini Awasthi (b. 1966); Shubha Mudgal (b. 1959); Vidya Rao; Dr. Rita Dev; Vidushi Manju Sundaram; Rita Ganguly (b. 1934); Vidushi Sulochana Brahaspati (b. 1937); Pandit Sajan Mishra and Pandit Swaransh Mishra; Vidushi Kaushiki Chakrabarty (b. 1980), of the Patiala and ITC lineage but among the most prominent living thumri performers; Madhumita Ray; and Kameshwar Pathak of Gaya. In advocacy and revival the field also has Manjari Chaturvedi.

Since 2017 the field has thinned at unusual speed: Girija Devi (2017), Savita Devi (2019), Shanti Hiranand (2020), Rajan Mishra (2021) and Chhannulal Mishra (2025) have all gone within eight years, and with Savita Devi the last hereditary custodian of the Banaras courtesan repertoire. The music now passes almost entirely through the disciple networks and the academy.

Mufaddal Idris Khumri

September 07, 2026