Women are fading out from Bollywood music

Though many activities in Indian public life have been dominated by men, there is one where women have led the way – playback singing in Bollywood music. Yet in recent years, even that has changed: the melodious voices you hear in the top movies have become increasingly male.

The number of songs sung by only women in 2017 was less than half of those sung by only men.

Bollywood music albums didn’t always look like this. An analysis of more than 24,000 Bollywood songs from the 50 highest-grossing movies of every year since 1950 revealed that the share of songs being sung by women is constantly declining.

Take, for example, the solo, that most versatile of Bollywood’s musical forms. The solo can be used to introspect, as in Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli, sung by Manna Dey, or to seduce, as in Don’s classic Yeh Mera Dil sung by Asha Bhosle.

While it continues to be a part of Bollywood films, today, one in every four solos is sung by women. Contrast that with the 50s and 60s, where they sang three in every four.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, when Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle dominated all of Bollywood music, very few competitors existed. In the earlier years, Geeta Dutt and Shamshad Begum had their share of solos, but they never managed to overpower the Mangeshkar sisters. The male voices were Mohammad Rafi’s in the 1950s and 1960s, and Kishore Kumar’s in the 1970s and 1980s. Other male singers did not sing nearly as much.

In 1958, for example, Asha

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