दादरा — पदार्पण रिकॉर्डिंग, इंदुबाला

“Dadra — Debut Recordings” represents Indubala's first sides for the Gramophone Company, c. 1921 in Calcutta — the Gauhar Jaan school passing to its second generation, in Khamaj-ang dadra with harmonium and tabla on His Master's Voice 78s.

Indubala's early dadra sides carry the Gauhar Jaan school's fingerprints — the crisp mukhda return, the conversational bol-banav, the lilt that fills six beats without crowding them — in a younger, rounder voice that the microphone era would later reward.

Her debut repertoire was the Calcutta salon's standard treasury — dadra and thumri texts of teasing and waiting — sung with the dual-city advantage of a Rambagan upbringing: Hindustani words, Bengali tenderness.

Indubala took taleem from Gauhar Jaan in the star's late Calcutta years and entered the HMV studio around 1921 — almost exactly as her guru exited it. The companies needed new women's voices for a market the war years had starved; Indubala supplied them for six more decades, into radio and film. The debut sides are where that long career begins.

Her debut marks the gramophone tradition's first true succession: a tawaif-lineage taleem passing intact into the post-acoustic age. Historians of Bengal's recording culture treat Indubala's 1920s sides as the bridge between Gauhar's era and the radio generation.