मिस सोशी मुखी

Miss Soshi Mukhi is one of Indian music history's most overlooked yet historically significant figures. She was a young actress and singer associated with the Classic Theatre Company of Calcutta, one of the premier theatrical troupes performing Anglo-Indian and contemporary Bengali theatrical works in the early 1900s.

On 8 November 1902, Frederick William Gaisberg of the Gramophone & Typewriter Company arrived in Calcutta to make the first commercial recordings of Indian music. Seeking theatrical performers as well as traditional musicians, Gaisberg recorded Miss Soshi Mukhi early in his sessions. In doing so, he captured what became India's very first-ever gramophone recording — predating Gauhar Jaan's more famous November 1902 recordings by several weeks or months (exact dating of early recordings is sometimes ambiguous in historical records).

However, Gaisberg's notes about Soshi Mukhi were dismissive. He described her voice as 'miserable' and her technical abilities as crude compared to the training and polish he would encounter in Gauhar Jaan. This colonial-era prejudice, combined with the fact that Gaisberg only recorded a handful of tracks from Soshi Mukhi compared to 150+ from Gauhar Jaan, meant that Soshi Mukhi's recordings were rarely pressed in quantity and quickly forgotten.

Very little biographical information about Soshi Mukhi survives. Theatre company records from the era are sparse or lost. No photographs of her are known to exist. She represents the many talented performers of the early recording era whose contributions were overshadowed by more commercially successful contemporaries.

Yet her historical significance is undeniable: Miss Soshi Mukhi's voice was the first Indian voice captured on a gramophone disc. She deserves recognition as a pioneer, even if circumstances and prejudice relegated her to obscurity.

Miss Soshi Mukhi holds a unique and often-overlooked place in Indian music history: she was THE FIRST INDIAN VOICE EVER RECORDED ON A GRAMOPHONE, preceding even Gauhar Jaan by nearly a year.

Miss Soshi Mukhi's historical significance lies not in her artistry (which Gaisberg criticized) but in the fact that she was the first. Her recording represents the very moment when Indian music entered the age of mechanical reproduction. Though overshadowed by Gauhar Jaan's superior talent and larger legacy, Soshi Mukhi deserves recognition as a pioneer. Her story also illustrates how colonial-era prejudices and commercial success determined whose voices were preserved in history — a reminder that 'first' does not always mean 'best remembered,' and that many talented performers were forgotten by circumstance rather than lack of merit.