What a Blast!

Usha Uthup is my new jam, as the kids might say.

Indian singer and actress Usha - or Didi as she is known to her fans - was born in 1947 to a policeman father and a well-red mother and was raised in Mumbai: her two elder sisters had their own vocal act, the Sami Sisters. Although she had no formal training in music, when she was nine years old her sisters introduced her to Ameen Sayani, then the most popular radio announcer in India. Ameen gave Ushu a spot on the popular Ovaltine Music Hour on Radio Ceylon, where she sang Mockingbird Hill. Other radio appearances followed.

Usha began to pursue a professional singing career in 1969, at the Nine Gems nightclub in Madras. ‘It used to be in the basement of the Safire theatre complex,’ she told The Hindu newspaper in 2019. ‘There’s magic about Madras; there’s a buzz I get every time the plane lands here’. Her recording career around 1972, singing in more than thirteen Indian languages and dialects, including Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla, Gujurati and Tamil, and ten foreign languages:  French, German, Italian, Sinhalese, Swahili, Russian, Nepalese, Arabic, Creole, and of course, English. She has appeared in around 50 Bollywood movies, both on-screen and providing the vocals for other actresses.

According to Usha’s website, she has recorded more than a hundred albums in seventeen Indian languages, sung in several thousand concerts, performed in all major countries and has been on television since its inception in India. Usha has served as a role model for generations of young Indians and has been an unwavering ambassador for traditional Indian values. She has always worn a sari (kanjeevaram), fresh flowers in her hair and her beaming smile has won her many fans. She’s still appearing in movies, and making concert appearances, today after more than a half-century in the business.

Her 1984 album Blast Off! is just insane. For this collection Usha wrote the music, with the off-kilter lyrics provided by Abidur Rahman. I implore you to check it out: Blast Off! is beyond wonderful, with a peculiar mix of shredding electric guitar, great Indian beats, the occasional scat vocal (Usha does a great Cleo Laine), cheesy 70s keyboards, the odd splash of reggae (on Chewing Gum Lips), a Christmas song and a plea to Moses to give her his ‘stick’!

From Blast Off! here are my two favourite tracks: is the magnificent Welcome, Test Tube Baby and the bonkers Lucy Was Crucified, which deals with the taboo subject of unwanted pregnancy. The whole album is an absolute joy.

Enjoy!

Download Baby HERE

Download Lucy HERE