Disco Nazia: disarticulating female playback and the heroine in early ‘80s Hindi cinema

ABSTRACT Though only fifteen at the time and originally from Pakistan, Nazia Hassan arguably reshaped female playback singing in popular Hindi cinema with ‘Aap jaise koi,’ the hit song she recorded for Qurbani (1980). Hassan’s song for this film, and her ensuing hit songs for the subsequent film, Star (1982), can be seen as ushering in a new type of female playback singing which corresponds in many ways with the simultaneous advent of the disco phenomenon and the new woman in Hindi cinema. Yet this paper will explore how Hassan’s voice became disarticulated from the heroine performing (to) this singing, through her shifting pitch and ensuing release of private albums, including Disco Deewane (1981), which became the first successful pop album in South Asia. Hassan’s sonic detachment from the Bollywood ecumene can also be seen in the attendant onscreen female performer’s inability to effectively match this new female sound via her subsequent dance performance. Such disarticulation has deeper resonances for both representations of the heroine in Hindi cinema and the segmentation of such female representation, between desiring, offscreen voice and moving, onscreen body. Along with exploring how Hassan played a key role in rearticulating such dynamics, this paper will examine the broader legacy of her voice, as in contemporary Bollywood homages such as ‘The Disco Song,’ from Student of the Year (2012), in which Hassan's voice is supplanted by contemporary playback singer Sunidhi Chauhan’s, as well as how its erasure reformulates the attendant historiography of early ‘80s Hindi cinema.