Folk singer Sharda Sinha, who brought gravitas to the art and was the sound of festivals in Bihar, passes away

Sinha, who had developed liver complications, was first admitted to ILBS, Delhi, before being shifted to AIIMS. Her son had received a call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday morning to know about Sinha’s condition.

Often feted as the successor to legendary folk singer Vindyavasini Devi, Sinha brought respectability to folk artists.

In an interview to The Indian Express in 2021, she had recounted highs and lows of 50 years of singing. It was in 1971 that she had first taken the mike at an HMV talent hunt in Lucknow in the presence of Begum Akhtar, who praised her tonal quality and said, “If you continue doing good riyaz, you would go a long way.” Her words proved prophetic – Sinha sang over 1,500 songs, ranging from Vidyapati’s poems to lyrics written by the likes of Mahendra Misir and Snehlata.

While she earned popularity with marriage and Chhath songs, she appealed as much to connoisseurs of classical folk music with her Vidyapati songs such as Kanak Bhudhar Shikhar Vasini. However, she was selective about singing Bollywood songs.

She received training under classical singer Pandit Ram Chandra Jha and later Raghu Jha of the Panchgachiya Gharana, and also learnt music from Sitaram Hari Dandekar of Gwalior gharana, and thumri dadra from Panna Devi of Kirana gharana.

Sinha made her own name at a time when Vindhyavasini Devi dominated the Bihar folk music scene with her stage shows and renditions on Akashvani. “But I had hardly listened to her as I was more given to classical music,” Sinha had said, adding that it was still pre-LP (long play record) days. “I got my first chance with HMV and all my three devotional songs made me famous. I traversed from SP (short play) to SEP (short elongated play), from LP records to cassettes, and from MP3 to YouTube. I also post reels on Instagram now,” she had told The Indian Express.