Biography
Vocalist and songwriter Asha Puthli had already earned recognition across India before relocating to New York in the late 1960s. Her appearance on Ornette Coleman’s landmark 1971 album Science Fiction quickly drew notice throughout the American jazz scene. With the four albums she recorded for CBS Europe she foreshadowed several important shifts in Western popular music. The 1976 release The Devil Is Loose placed her slinky vocals over pulsing electronic beats and a bumping bassline within a sexy Euro-disco framework. Although she devoted the 1980s primarily to acting and modeling, she resumed recording with the 1990 album Hari Om and later that decade issued The New Beat of Nostalgia. Frequently sampled by rappers and dance producers, Puthli emerged as an early exponent of the East-West fusion dance styles embraced by British club audiences. A boundary crosser in both music and life, she resumed live performance in 2006 and released Lost in 2009. In 2019 Tuscan singer Gabriel Grillotti featured her as a collaborator on the single “Je Crois C’est Ça L’amour.”
Born in Mumbai in 1945, two years before India achieved independence from Great Britain, Puthli grew up in a family able to support formal musical training. Though Hindu, she attended Catholic schools where she studied Indian classical vocal technique, Western opera, and dance, yet remained captivated by jazz broadcasts on Voice of America and Dusty Springfield’s pop recordings on Radio Ceylon. At age thirteen she began securing female-vocal engagements with local bands. Despite warnings from instructors that pop singing might compromise her technique, she chose that path.
During her late teens she performed in Mumbai jazz clubs and auditioned for films. New Yorker contributor Ved Mehta heard one such performance and devoted part of his article on Indian jazz to her. In 1967, while visiting the set of The Guru being filmed by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, Puthli responded to a call for silence with a loud operatic laugh. When Merchant inquired about the source, she delivered a theatrical apology that revealed her stage presence. Recognizing her vocal projection, Merchant cast her in a small role.
Determined to succeed in the United States, Puthli secured work as a British Airways flight attendant, which allowed international travel. She auditioned successfully for choreographer Martha Graham, received a scholarship to study with her company, and settled in New York City. There she reconnected with Mehta, who introduced her to Columbia A&R executive John Hammond. Hammond produced the unissued single “Asha’s Thing” and later arranged a session with the Peter Ivers Blues Band for a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar.” Impressed by an elusive quality in her voice, Hammond nevertheless championed her talent and daring; he had already been discussing with Ornette Coleman the need for a distinctive female vocalist, and he recommended Puthli. Coleman engaged her for two tracks on the still visionary 1972 album Science Fiction—“What Reason Could I Give” and “All of My Life”—after which DownBeat’s critics’ poll named her best female jazz vocalist.
Vanguard jazz offered limited commercial prospects in the early 1970s. Armed with a Columbia contract, Puthli moved to England, appeared in Merchant-Ivory’s 1972 film Savages, and collaborated with pop producer Del Newman, known for his work with Elton John. The resulting self-titled 1973 debut mixed rock, R&B, and funk while covering material by Bill Withers, Jimmy Webb, and J.J. Cale; its standout track was a boldly sexual reinterpretation of George Harrison’s “I Dig Love” that became a British club staple. The following year she released her second album, She Loves to Hear the Music, again favoring pop and enlisting Miles Davis producer Teo Macero. The set featured lush, funky interpretations of songs by Carole Bayer Sager, Van McCoy, and Neil Sedaka—whose “Laughter in the Rain” served as the single—alongside material from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and Cole Porter, plus two originals: “You’ve Been Loud Too Long” and “Paper Doll.”
Encouraged by discotheque response, Columbia and Puthli sought a radio hit. She traveled to Germany to work with producer-composer Dieter Zimmermann and arranger-conductor Dave Virgin King; together they wrote The Devil Is Loose and assembled the Berlin Chamber Choir, Strings of the Berlin Opera, and a studio funk band. Released in 1976, the ahead-of-its-time collection of space-age proto-disco wove bumping basslines, electronic beats, and layered vocal harmonies into club material that charted in Europe, though it struggled elsewhere. DJs and dancers continued to value it, and the album remains the most frequently reissued entry in her catalog. Its classic single “Space Talk” was sampled by the Notorious B.I.G. on “The World Is Filled” in 1997. While her profile remained modest internationally, radio and club play in India, combined with frequent magazine features, expanded her domestic following.
Her final CBS album appeared in 1978. Recorded in Brussels with producer Jean Vanloo, it received three distinct editions: initially titled Asha in Europe, then L’Indiana in England and the United States, each with varying track listings that sometimes included eight songs and sometimes six with extended mixes. Entirely Euro-pop disco, the project sold poorly, ending her CBS tenure.
In 1979 she collaborated with photographer Richard Avedon on an extensive fashion shoot and released 1001 Nights of Love on the Phillips subsidiary Autobahn Records. Producer Rainer Pietsch shaped nine deeply funky, slickly produced originals co-written with Puthli. She followed with the 1980 album I’m Gonna Kill It Tonight for the same label, again produced by Pietsch, co-written by the pair, and centered on new-wave and synth-rock textures. Their final joint effort, Only the Headaches Remain, closed her 1980s output. Apart from a 1989 appearance on Henry Threadgill’s Novus album Easily Slip Into Another World, she spent much of the decade and the following one raising her son and recording for Bollywood.
A brief return came in 1990 with the cassette-only Hari Om, an unusual fusion of electro, Indian music, and abstract pop. In 1998 she contributed the singles “Destiny” and “Again” to the award-winning Bollywood soundtrack for Monsoon and self-released the cassette-only Hindustani-pop collection The New Beat of Nostalgia. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, rappers and electronic producers frequently sampled her 1970s recordings; in addition to the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z drew from her catalog for The Blueprint 2.1. Unaware of this renewed interest until her son mentioned that New York DJ Sean Dinsmore had paid over one hundred dollars for one of her albums, Puthli contacted him and contributed vocals to the Dum Dum Project’s Indian-flavored track “Diwani Diwana.”
Although trained in Carnatic music, Puthli rarely performed it during her most active recording years. As electronic music increasingly incorporated global samples, demand for her as an Indian vocalist grew. She appeared on two Bill Laswell projects in that capacity—2003’s Asana, Vol. 3: Peaceful Heart and 2006’s Asana Ohm Shanti—while also singing on Stratus’s charting 2005 album Fear of Magnetism and numerous white-label chillout releases. She received co-billing on Leo Cesari’s 2008 hit Bossalenta. In 2009 she released Lost on Kyrone, produced and arranged by Mauro Paoluzzi, whose studio ensemble included Sheila E. guitarist Phil Palmer, violinist Ian Cooper, and classical tenor Walter Barbaria. The eleven-track set offered idiosyncratic readings of Procol Harum’s “A Salty Dog,” Edwin Starr’s “War (What Is It Good For?),” a new version of “The Devil Is Loose,” and two Hindi songs.
In 2019 she again shared billing with Tuscan singer-songwriter Gabriel Grillotti, owner of the Kyrone label that had issued Lost, on his charting single “Je Crois C’est Ça L’amour.” In 2021 Mr. Bongo reissued The Devil Is Loose, followed in 2022 by the twenty-track anthology The Essential Asha Puthli, which encompassed her work with Coleman, the Surfers, and Charlie Mariano, soundtrack contributions, and key selections from her own releases.
Born in Mumbai in 1945, two years before India achieved independence from Great Britain, Puthli grew up in a family able to support formal musical training. Though Hindu, she attended Catholic schools where she studied Indian classical vocal technique, Western opera, and dance, yet remained captivated by jazz broadcasts on Voice of America and Dusty Springfield’s pop recordings on Radio Ceylon. At age thirteen she began securing female-vocal engagements with local bands. Despite warnings from instructors that pop singing might compromise her technique, she chose that path.
During her late teens she performed in Mumbai jazz clubs and auditioned for films. New Yorker contributor Ved Mehta heard one such performance and devoted part of his article on Indian jazz to her. In 1967, while visiting the set of The Guru being filmed by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, Puthli responded to a call for silence with a loud operatic laugh. When Merchant inquired about the source, she delivered a theatrical apology that revealed her stage presence. Recognizing her vocal projection, Merchant cast her in a small role.
Determined to succeed in the United States, Puthli secured work as a British Airways flight attendant, which allowed international travel. She auditioned successfully for choreographer Martha Graham, received a scholarship to study with her company, and settled in New York City. There she reconnected with Mehta, who introduced her to Columbia A&R executive John Hammond. Hammond produced the unissued single “Asha’s Thing” and later arranged a session with the Peter Ivers Blues Band for a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar.” Impressed by an elusive quality in her voice, Hammond nevertheless championed her talent and daring; he had already been discussing with Ornette Coleman the need for a distinctive female vocalist, and he recommended Puthli. Coleman engaged her for two tracks on the still visionary 1972 album Science Fiction—“What Reason Could I Give” and “All of My Life”—after which DownBeat’s critics’ poll named her best female jazz vocalist.
Vanguard jazz offered limited commercial prospects in the early 1970s. Armed with a Columbia contract, Puthli moved to England, appeared in Merchant-Ivory’s 1972 film Savages, and collaborated with pop producer Del Newman, known for his work with Elton John. The resulting self-titled 1973 debut mixed rock, R&B, and funk while covering material by Bill Withers, Jimmy Webb, and J.J. Cale; its standout track was a boldly sexual reinterpretation of George Harrison’s “I Dig Love” that became a British club staple. The following year she released her second album, She Loves to Hear the Music, again favoring pop and enlisting Miles Davis producer Teo Macero. The set featured lush, funky interpretations of songs by Carole Bayer Sager, Van McCoy, and Neil Sedaka—whose “Laughter in the Rain” served as the single—alongside material from Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and Cole Porter, plus two originals: “You’ve Been Loud Too Long” and “Paper Doll.”
Encouraged by discotheque response, Columbia and Puthli sought a radio hit. She traveled to Germany to work with producer-composer Dieter Zimmermann and arranger-conductor Dave Virgin King; together they wrote The Devil Is Loose and assembled the Berlin Chamber Choir, Strings of the Berlin Opera, and a studio funk band. Released in 1976, the ahead-of-its-time collection of space-age proto-disco wove bumping basslines, electronic beats, and layered vocal harmonies into club material that charted in Europe, though it struggled elsewhere. DJs and dancers continued to value it, and the album remains the most frequently reissued entry in her catalog. Its classic single “Space Talk” was sampled by the Notorious B.I.G. on “The World Is Filled” in 1997. While her profile remained modest internationally, radio and club play in India, combined with frequent magazine features, expanded her domestic following.
Her final CBS album appeared in 1978. Recorded in Brussels with producer Jean Vanloo, it received three distinct editions: initially titled Asha in Europe, then L’Indiana in England and the United States, each with varying track listings that sometimes included eight songs and sometimes six with extended mixes. Entirely Euro-pop disco, the project sold poorly, ending her CBS tenure.
In 1979 she collaborated with photographer Richard Avedon on an extensive fashion shoot and released 1001 Nights of Love on the Phillips subsidiary Autobahn Records. Producer Rainer Pietsch shaped nine deeply funky, slickly produced originals co-written with Puthli. She followed with the 1980 album I’m Gonna Kill It Tonight for the same label, again produced by Pietsch, co-written by the pair, and centered on new-wave and synth-rock textures. Their final joint effort, Only the Headaches Remain, closed her 1980s output. Apart from a 1989 appearance on Henry Threadgill’s Novus album Easily Slip Into Another World, she spent much of the decade and the following one raising her son and recording for Bollywood.
A brief return came in 1990 with the cassette-only Hari Om, an unusual fusion of electro, Indian music, and abstract pop. In 1998 she contributed the singles “Destiny” and “Again” to the award-winning Bollywood soundtrack for Monsoon and self-released the cassette-only Hindustani-pop collection The New Beat of Nostalgia. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, rappers and electronic producers frequently sampled her 1970s recordings; in addition to the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z drew from her catalog for The Blueprint 2.1. Unaware of this renewed interest until her son mentioned that New York DJ Sean Dinsmore had paid over one hundred dollars for one of her albums, Puthli contacted him and contributed vocals to the Dum Dum Project’s Indian-flavored track “Diwani Diwana.”
Although trained in Carnatic music, Puthli rarely performed it during her most active recording years. As electronic music increasingly incorporated global samples, demand for her as an Indian vocalist grew. She appeared on two Bill Laswell projects in that capacity—2003’s Asana, Vol. 3: Peaceful Heart and 2006’s Asana Ohm Shanti—while also singing on Stratus’s charting 2005 album Fear of Magnetism and numerous white-label chillout releases. She received co-billing on Leo Cesari’s 2008 hit Bossalenta. In 2009 she released Lost on Kyrone, produced and arranged by Mauro Paoluzzi, whose studio ensemble included Sheila E. guitarist Phil Palmer, violinist Ian Cooper, and classical tenor Walter Barbaria. The eleven-track set offered idiosyncratic readings of Procol Harum’s “A Salty Dog,” Edwin Starr’s “War (What Is It Good For?),” a new version of “The Devil Is Loose,” and two Hindi songs.
In 2019 she again shared billing with Tuscan singer-songwriter Gabriel Grillotti, owner of the Kyrone label that had issued Lost, on his charting single “Je Crois C’est Ça L’amour.” In 2021 Mr. Bongo reissued The Devil Is Loose, followed in 2022 by the twenty-track anthology The Essential Asha Puthli, which encompassed her work with Coleman, the Surfers, and Charlie Mariano, soundtrack contributions, and key selections from her own releases.
Albums
Disco Mystic: Select Remixes Volume 1
2023
Space Talk: With Remixes By Dimitri From Paris
2023
Best of the 70s Remastered
2012
Hari Om
1990
The Devil is Loose
1976
Asha Puthli
1973
Singles
