ABSTRACT
The earliest musical voice recorded in India was that of a courtesan. When Fred Gaisberg came to India for his first recording expedition in 1902, he found amongst the baijis and 'nautch girls' a ready pool of talented singers who agreed to sing for his machines (Michael Kinnear, 1994). It was this expedition that made Gauhar Jaan India's first singing star. To inscribe her identity on the sonic format, Gauhar Jaan would end her songs by announcing, 'My name is Gauhar Jaan.' With quick sales and an expanding gramophone market, Gauhar Jaan's voice was no longer confined to the salons of Calcutta. Nor were her listeners only the rich patrons of Calcutta or the rajas of small estates like Darbhanga and Rampur. Gauhar Jaan's style of rendering the thumri became a template for female musical performance and paved the way for many professional women singers to get their voices inscribed through mechanical reproduction. It was the material object of the gramophone disc that expanded the aural domain, setting in motion an imaginary landscape of female mobility and affective states.
