Falsetto Singing as the Modern Norm/“Normal” in Indian Female Singing

 

Falsetto Singing as the Modern Norm/“Normal” in Indian Female Singing

Shrikant G Talageri 

 

What is falsetto and what do I mean by falsetto singing here?

According to Google, “Falsetto is a high vocal register, Italian for "false," produced by vibrating the ligamentous edges of the vocal cords, creating a breathy, flute-like sound above the normal (modal) voice, often used by males to reach high notes beyond their chest voice, contrasting with the fuller head voice where cords vibrate more fully. It's a stylistic choice in many music genres, used by artists like Prince, Smokey Robinson, and The Weeknd, differing from the stronger, fuller head voice through vocal cord closure and dynamics.”

So there are very clearly circumstances, and certain points in any singing performance, where the voice can very legitimately slide into a falsetto mode. In harmonic western music, where voices are classified as per pitch (mainly, from low to high, bass, baritone and tenor for male voices, and alto, mezzo-soprano and soprano for female voices) and coordinated in choral and opera music, it is a perfectly legitimate technique in singing in its appropriate places.

 

However in Indian singing, especially in female voices in the singing of light music, it has become almost the compulsory norm today to sing in a falsetto pitch on a regular basis. Listen to any singing performance of light music on TV channels, in orchestras and public functions, or even in private singing in homes and private gatherings, it will be seen that the female singers automatically and compulsorily adopt a style of falsetto singing. There will be exceptions to this rule, but I think rarely full exceptions. To the extent that listeners also tend to have started appreciating female falsetto singing as normal and even as desirable and admirable.

I remember an incident around ten years ago (around 2015-16) when I was working in the Inward Clearing Department of Central Bank of India. Someone had put, on their mobile, one of the popular religious chants (I don’t remember whether the Gayatri Mantra or something from the Bhagawadgita, or some stotra in Sanskrit) in a high falsetto female voice. I was gritting my teeth in irritation and wondering how people could so regularly sing and listen to this kind of irritating falsetto singing, when the lady sitting beside me sighed in ecstasy and exclaimed: “how some people have this God’s gift of singing, no?”. I was speechless.

How did this falsetto singing become so dominatingly prevalent in female light music singing in India (to the extent that it is slowly seeping into folk music and classical music as well)?

 

Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle are two of the brightest shining lights of Indian music. I personally would go so far as to say (even at the risk of sounding extremist) that in my opinion if there is one person without whom it is impossible to think of Indian music in the twentieth century (or indeed of the twentieth century itself), it is Lata Mangeshkar. The following facebook post that came up in google is quite apt:

https://www.facebook.com/TimelessIndianMelodies/posts/two-sisters-two-voices-two-moods-of-the-same-musical-universelata-mangeshkar-was/1247902907374038/

"Timeless Indian Melodies

23 October 2025 ·

Two sisters. Two voices. Two moods of the same musical universe.

Lata Mangeshkar was silence made divine - the voice that floated like a prayer at dawn, untouched by time, untainted by artifice. She sang with the restraint of a saint and the soul of a poet. Every note of hers carried that soft melancholy of morning light - gentle, sacred, and eternal. She didn’t just sing songs; she sanctified them.

Asha Bhosle, on the other hand, was midnight dressed in sequins - playful, unpredictable, and deliciously daring. Where Lata soothed, Asha seduced. Where one prayed, the other partied. Her voice could wink, flirt, tease, and then turn around and break your heart without warning. She was jazz to Lata’s raga, champagne to her chandan.

Together, they defined Indian music’s split personality - the divine and the decadent, the temple bell and the nightclub saxophone. Two legends born of the same womb, ruling two different worlds - yet both untouchably royal.

The truth is, there was never any rivalry - only revelation. Lata gave India its soul. Asha gave it its swagger. And between them, they composed the soundtrack of every emotion this country has ever felt”.

[Though actually, if you listen to Asha Bhosle’s old non-film bhakti-songs in Marathi like “dhaga dhaga akhand vinu ya”, “Raghupati Raghav gajari gajari”, “Dnyandev baal mazha”, “Hari uccharani”, “uthi Govinda uthi Gopala”, “Pandharinatha zhadakari ata”, and so many others, her voice (apart from the rich sort of voice that she had in all old Marathi songs) seems at least equally deserving of the description: “the voice that floated like a prayer at dawn, untouched by time, untainted by artifice. She sang with the restraint of a saint and the soul of a poet. Every note of hers carried that soft melancholy of morning light - gentle, sacred, and eternal. She didn’t just sing songs; she sanctified them”].

 

But the sad factual truth is that it is they who practically introduced falsetto singing as a norm/normal for female voices in Indian light music. The result is that today, while most male singers in light music generally still sing in more-or-less natural voices (perhaps resorting to falsetto only as a technique whenever it becomes necessary as should be the case), it has become almost compulsory, in “popular” light music, for female singers to sing in falsettos (to the extent that some of them finally end up even speaking in a falsetto voice). That it has become the norm/normal is in my eyes a very sad thing for Indian music.

I will not give specific names of singers who sing totally in falsetto voices today, and there are indeed some exceptions to this rule: i.e. female singers who sing light music in normal or near-normal voices and only resort to a kind of falsetto voice in situations where it is or becomes necessary. These few exceptions (I will not name them either) are able, like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle in their heyday, to achieve a smooth and healthy balance between normal voices and falsettos. But the point is that they are the exception rather than the rule.

What is unfortunate is that male singing in normal voices but female singing in falsetto seems to have become an unspoken rule in light music (and rapidly spreading into folk music and semi-classical music as well). What is infinitely worse is when this becomes more than an unspoken rule, and becomes an actually spoken rule or advice. I still remember seeing a singing competition program on some Marathi channel many years ago, when one of the competitors sang a light music song extremely beautifully and in her natural voice. To my amazement, disbelief and indignation, the eminent judge (an eminent classical singer herself, but also a singer of light music − and I will name her in this instance, with due apologies to her as a great singer: it was Vidushi Devaki Pandit) actually upbraided her instead of praising her, and advised her that while singing in a normal voice was perfectly right when it comes to Classical music, light music should always be sung in a chor awaz (falsetto)!

Perhaps this (i.e. music) not being my direct field, since I am not myself a singer or an instrument player, some people would feel I am speaking in matters which are not my concern and not my business. But I am definitely a passionate lover of music, and this matter has been a thorn in the flesh for me since so many years that I could not resist the temptation to write an article on this.