दादरा-ग़ज़ल — आरंभिक तवे, अंगुरबाला

“Dadra and Ghazal — Early Sides” represents Angurbala's first records for the Gramophone Company, c. 1922–23 in Calcutta — the theatre star joining the disc trade beside Indubala, in Khamaj-ang dadra and salon ghazal with harmonium and tabla on His Master's Voice 78s.

Angurbala's voice carried the training of the professional stage: projection built for the gallery, ornament kept clean so a packed house could follow. On disc that translated into bright, immediately legible dadras and ghazals — a different flavour from Indubala's salon intimacy, and the two flavours together defined the decade's female record sound in Calcutta.

Her early repertoire moved between the Hindustani light classical stock — dadra texts of Braj teasing and waiting — and the Urdu ghazal of the theatre interval. The specific debut texts are undocumented; what is certain is the dual Hindi-Bengali audience her records addressed from the start.

Born in Calcutta in 1896, Angurbala rose through the city's theatre world to become one of its leading singing actresses, and the Gramophone Company signed her as her stage fame grew in the early 1920s. With Indubala she formed the most celebrated pairing in Bengal's record history — colleagues, rivals and lifelong parallel careers. The early dadra-ghazal sides mark the start of a catalogue that would later carry Kazi Nazrul Islam's songs to all of Bengal.

Angurbala's arrival completed the Calcutta triangle — stage, salon and studio — through which Bengal's recorded music ran for two decades. When Nazrul joined the Gramophone Company in 1928, hers became one of the defining voices of Nazrul-geeti; the 1923 sides are where that long road begins.