Shreya Ghoshal biography
Shreya Ghoshal (born 12 March 1984) is an Indian playback singer, composer and music producer. She has received four National Film Awards, four Kerala State Film Awards, two Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, seven Filmfare Awards including six for Best Female Playback Singer and ten Filmfare Awards South. She has recorded songs for films and albums in various Indian languages and has established herself as a leading playback singer of Indian cinema.
Ghoshal aspired to become a playback singer from an early age. At the age of four, she started learning music. At the age of six, she started her formal training in classical music. At the age of sixteen, she was noticed by the mother of film-maker Sanjay Leela Bhansali when she entered and won the television singing reality show Sa Re Ga Ma. Following that, she made her Bollywood playback singing debut with Bhansali’s romantic drama Devdas (2002) for which she received a National Film Award, a Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer and a Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent.
Apart from playback singing, Ghoshal has appeared as a judge on several television reality shows and she also appears in music videos. She performs in musical concerts around the world. She has been honoured by the United States state of Ohio, where Governor Ted Strickland declared 26 June 2010 as “Shreya Ghoshal Day”. In April 2013, she was honoured in London by the selected members of House of Commons of the United Kingdom. She has also featured five times in the Forbes list of the top 100 celebrities from India. In 2017, Ghoshal became the first Indian singer to have her wax figurine in Madame Tussauds Museum.
Shreya Ghoshal early and personal life
Shreya Ghoshal was born on 12 March 1984 to a Bengali Hindu family in Berhampore, Murshidabad district, West Bengal. She grew up in Rawatbhata, a small town near Kota, Rajasthan Her father, Bishwajit Ghoshal from Munshiganj district (Bikrampur), Bangladesh, is an electrical engineer and works for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, and her mother, Sarmistha Ghoshal, is a literature post-graduate. She has a younger brother, Soumyadeep Ghoshal. At the age of four, she started learning music.
Ghoshal completed her schooling up to eighth grade at the Atomic Energy Central School in Rawatbhata. In 1995, she won the All India Light Vocal Music Competition, New Delhi, organised by Sangam Kala Group, in Light Vocal group in sub-junior level. In 1997, when her father was transferred to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, she was relocated to Mumbai, with her family and studied at the Atomic Energy Central School in Anushakti Nagar She joined the Atomic Energy Junior College to study science. She dropped out from the junior college and enrolled at the SIES College of Arts, Science, and Commerce in Mumbai, where she took up arts with English as her major.
Ghoshal’s mother used to help her in rehearsals and accompany her on the Tanpura, starting with mostly Bengali songs. At the age of six, Ghoshal started with her formal training in classical music. She acquired training from Late Kalyanji Bhai for 18 months and continued her classical music training with Late Mukta Bhide in Mumbai. Her first stage performance was made at a club’s annual function. When she turned six, she started her lessons in Hindustani classical music. In 2000, at the age of sixteen, she participated and won the television music reality show Sa Re Ga Ma (now Sa Re Ga Ma Pa) on the channel Zee TV.
On 5 February 2015, Ghoshal married her childhood friend Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya in a traditional Bengali ceremony. Before getting married, Ghoshal dated him for almost 10 years. According to Ghoshal, apart from being a singer, she loves to travel and read books but it’s cooking that has a healing effect on her.
