Prakash Kaurਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ਼ ਕੌਰ

Prakash Kaur (19 September 1919 to 2 November 1982) was a Punjabi folk singer from Lahore and the elder sister of Surinder Kaur, with whom she formed the most famous sister duo in Punjabi music. She was the first of the two to sing on radio, she brought her thirteen-year-old sister to the studio in 1943, and their first duet, Maavan te dheean ral baithian, began a partnership that carried Punjabi folk song from the age of the gramophone into the age of radio. She recorded for four decades and was still in demand at All India Radio in her final years.

A childhood in Bhati Gate, Lahore

She was born in Lahore, in the walled city's Mohalla Bhati Gate, the eldest daughter of Bishan Dass, in a Sehajdhari Sikh family. Music in that Lahore was woven into weddings and festivals, and the young Prakash drew her first inspiration from the Rababi women who sang at such gatherings. There was no formal training at the start, only a household city full of song and a voice that people remembered. Her younger sister Surinder, ten years her junior, grew up in the same sounds, and the two voices would shape each other for life.

Radio Lahore and the first duet

Around 1940 the family allowed her to sing on the radio, then a bold step for a young woman, and in 1941 she made her professional debut with a live performance on Peshawar Radio. She became an accredited artist of All India Radio Lahore, and in August 1943 she took Surinder with her to the studio: the younger sister passed the audition too, and on 31 August 1943 the sisters recorded their first duet, Maavan te dheean ral baithian, mothers and daughters sitting together, for the His Master's Voice label. It was an instant success. Under coach Budh Singh Taan and music director Master Inayat Hussain, the sisters grounded their light singing in classical training, and duets like Dhol sipahiya and Haaye na vass badla followed, played on hand-wound gramophones across Punjab.

Partition and a new home in Delhi

Partition in 1947 tore the family out of Lahore. Like the city's other Hindus and Sikhs, they left empty-handed; Surinder went first to Ferozepur and then to Bombay, while Prakash, with her husband Harbans Singh Suri, an electrical engineer with the railways, settled after a short stay in Amritsar in New Delhi. Delhi, filling with Punjabi refugees, turned out to be a ready audience, and Prakash Kaur became the best-known Punjabi woman singer in north India. Her most loved songs of those years, Gori diyan jhanjran and Chan weh ki showkan mele di, played at weddings and fairs everywhere, and she performed constantly in Punjab's cities and at All India Radio Jalandhar.

The sisters reunited

In 1952 Surinder Kaur also left Bombay and settled in Delhi, and the duet era flowered again. For three decades the sisters recorded together for His Master's Voice and sang for All India Radio Delhi, where both were graded special class artists, above the A grade. Their voices carried wedding songs, folk tales and Sikh sacred verse: Chum chum rakho ni eh kalgi jujhar di and the songs of Machhiwara became classics of the repertoire. Prakash also trained a third sister, Narinder Kaur, who became an approved radio singer in Delhi, making the family a small school of Punjabi song in the capital.

How many songs did Prakash Kaur record?

By the usual estimate she recorded something like five hundred records across her career, solo and with her sisters, between the early 1940s and 1982. The figure is an approximation, because the sisters' earliest radio work was never transcribed and the Lahore shabads she sang for All India Radio survive in no archive. What survives is enough: hundreds of sides that taught two generations of Punjabis their own folk songs, and a style, direct, warm and unadorned, that singers still study.

Death and legacy

She stayed active almost to the end, despite failing health after a serious accident left her with a disability, and she died on 2 November 1982, aged 63. Two years later, in the November 1984 riots, her Delhi house was torched and her son Jaspal Singh Suri escaped to America. History remembers the duo through the younger sister's fame, but the record is clear about how it began: Prakash Kaur opened the studio door. As the elder voice of the pair, she is one of the founders of recorded Punjabi folk music, and every Punjabi wedding that still plays Maavan te dheean plays her first.