Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

About this episode

Shikha Jhingan discusses the impact of the female playback voice in Bollywood cinema and its cultural implications.

How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing stars—notably Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle—Jhingan situates the singing voice as a cinematic object with limitless possibilities of distribution and dispersal. She employs the perspectives of a diverse range of listeners across a vast media landscape to illustrate how the affective charge of the female playback voice, combined with developments in audio technology, has led to a gradual expansion of opportunities for women in film, popular music, and media and audio production. With nuanced exploration of the way the human voice becomes intertwined with devices such as the microphone, radio, cassettes, and digital technologies, Jhingan argues for the sonic excess of the female voice beyond the narrative and visual. The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema is an…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Shikha Jhingan

Topics covered

• female playback voice
• Bollywood
• sound studies
• performance theory
• gender studies
• cinema studies

Keywords

• female playback voice
• Bollywood
• sound studies
• Lata Mangeshkar
• Asha Bhosle
• audio technology
• gender studies

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Wayne State UP

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