Raj Begum

Some Lesser Known Facts About Raj Begum

• When Raj Begum was a child, her father encouraged her musical skills.

• Initially, she started singing the Kashmiri folk idioms at local wedding functions.

• After various performance practices, Raj Begum began a career in radio broadcasting.

• In the early 1950s, she started learning and practising singing on Radio Kashmir Srinagar.

• In 1954, Raj Begum began singing professionally on the Radio.

  

• Soon, she became one of the station’s most recognisable live voices. At that time, there were limited archival recordings.

• Raj Begum retired in 1986.

• The women vocalists in Kashmir changed their perceptions towards singing as a career after her powerful and uplifting performances. Raj Begum widened the opportunities for female public performance.

• Her singing genres included folk, soft classical, ghazals, devotional, and romantic songs. It focused mainly on Kashmiri poetic traditions.

  

• In the past, radio broadcasts were live, which made it challenging to present songs with real discographies. Some pieces of her songs remained in radio broadcasts and were later used in music collections.

• Raj Begum, along with contemporary Naseem Akhtar, tried to break down social restrictions about women singing publicly in Kashmir.

• Together, they helped the future generations of women artists to perform music on stage and on the radio.

• Several public commentators liked her performance because of her emphasis on the extended Kashmiri culture.

• They highlighted that her voice brought classical Kashmiri poetry into public awareness.

  

• Raj Begum was the second wife of her husband, Qadir Ganderbali.

• Reportedly, after his second marriage to Raj Begum, his first wife developed severe depression, and she ultimately died in Ganderbal.

• In the later years of her life, she lived in the Chanapora area of Srinagar.

• On 26 October 2016, at the age of 89, Raj Begum died in Srinagar after a period of illness. At the time of her death, she was residing with her daughter in Chanapora.

• She lent her voice to the Kashmiri heritage for more than seven decades.

• Apart from singing on the radio and at concerts, Raj Begum also lent her voice to the Kashmiri film Mehjoor. However, formal records of her film songs are limited in public sources.

• Once, during a media conversation, she expressed happiness that young people were singing well; however, they lacked knowledge of traditional music and Kashmiri poetry. She said,
  

  I am happy to see them around as some of them are quite talented and sing well.Some of them have excellent voice and have worked hard also. I am a little pained to find that a good number of these singers from young generation have little knowledge of good kashmiri poetry and traditional kashmiri music and the accompanying instruments.”

• In 2025, the film ‘Songs of Paradise’ was released. The film showed the journey of a Kashmiri woman who dreams of becoming a singer. The film was inspired by the songs of Raj Begum.