Suman Kalyanpur

Suman Kalyanpur was a playback singer counted among the three leading women singers of the golden era of Hindi film music. Over almost four decades she recorded a great many hit songs in Hindi, Marathi and 11 other languages. She was named for the Padma Bhushan in 2023 in the field of art, from Maharashtra ^[1].

Training

Kalyanpur was born on 28 January 1937 and began her career in 1952 with a broadcast on All India Radio’s Bombay station ^[2]. The music director Keshavrao Bhole taught her the basics, and she trained in classical, semi-classical and light music with teachers including Ustad Abdul Rehman Khan and Yashwant Deo ^[2].

The golden era

Between 1952 and 1986 she sang with the leading singers of the day, from Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh and Manna Dey to Kishore Kumar, Talat Mahmood and Lata Mangeshkar, and for composers such as S. D. Burman, Roshan, Shankar-Jaikishan, Naushad and Laxmikant-Pyarelal ^[2]. Critics admired her film songs, bhajans, light classical pieces and Urdu ghazals, which had a style of their own ^[2]. Her duet Aajkal tere mere pyar ke charche remains popular and has been remade many times ^[2].

She was the first Indian woman playback singer to give live concerts abroad, taking a show of Indian song and dance to the United States, Britain, where she sang at Wembley, South America, the West Indies and Canada ^[2]. She also sang free at five concerts for war widows organised by the Government of India ^[2].

Her awards included the Gujarat state film award for best female playback singer for several years in the early 1970s and the Lata Mangeshkar Award of both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh ^[2].

Kalyanpur died at her home in Mumbai on 31 May 2026, aged 89 ^[3].