In 1949, when Begum Akhtar sang in a national broadcast of All India Radio (AIR), she was an instant hit. Born in 1914 to a tawaif (courtesan) mother, she performed in her first formal concert in 1934 as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi. She sang in elite gatherings, in royal courts, and performed in Bombay films. Her transition from Akhtari Bai into Begum Akhtar began when she married an English-educated barrister from Lucknow – an event considered both a scandal and a miracle by wider society. Her husband made only one condition: that she would not perform in public, a condition to which she readily agreed. But five years into the marriage, Begum Akhtar experienced mental health issues and her condition deteriorated rapidly. Doctors advised her husband that she might survive if she were allowed to sing. Her 1949 performance at AIR Lucknow met with great success, and as long as she lived, success followed her. She died in 1974, a few hours after performing in a private gathering in Ahmedabad, leaving behind a rich legacy of ghazal and thumri genres of singing associated with tawaif kothas, or salons. By reinventing these genres, and bringing them from kothas to the respectability of AIR and concert halls, Begum Akhtar gave them dignity. One cannot give any account of twentieth-century ghazal and thumri singing without invoking her name.
A closer examination of Begum Akhtar's life and music, focusing on the genres of thumri and ghazal and their intersections with queerness in the context of caste and sexuality in postcolonial India, reveals that her life has been unwittingly connected to larger forces of modernity and contemporary popular culture.