गीता बाई

Geeta Bai was a vocalist specializing in seasonal folk forms, particularly the chaiti (spring) songs. Her 1906 recording of a Holi chaiti demonstrates the commercial viability of seasonal music releases timed to festival celebrations. ग्रामोफ़ोन कंपनी के आरंभिक कैटलॉग उनके नाम के तवे दर्ज करते हैं — उस पहले दशक की उन अनेक गायिकाओं में, जिनका संगीत तो बचा रह गया पर जीवन-वृत्त समय की धूल में खो गया। यही अधूरापन स्वयं उस युग का दस्तावेज़ है।

Geeta Bai's early life is not documented in surviving records. Her name appears in Gramophone Company catalogs from 1906, placing her within the first wave of professional recording artists in India. She likely trained within the tawaif or semi-classical folk tradition of northern India that specialised in seasonal repertoire.

Geeta Bai's documented career rests on her 1906 Gramophone Company recording of a Holi chaiti — a spring festival song. The record demonstrates command of the chaiti's characteristic lilt and the seasonal textual conventions of the Purab repertoire. In an era when the gramophone company actively sought regional specialist singers, she represents the commercial recognition of seasonal folk music as a viable recording genre.

A representative of the first generation of women whose voices the gramophone preserved, even as the record companies forgot their names. The Holi chaiti survives; the singer does not.

Geeta Bai belongs to the underdocumented generation of early gramophone-era singers whose records survive but whose lives do not. Her 1906 chaiti is evidence that the gramophone companies commercially validated regional seasonal music — not just classical or urban popular forms — within the first years of Indian recording.