Firoza Begum Biography 
Firoza Begum was a Nazrul Geeti singer who was born in the pre-independent India in 1930. Firoza was born in a Muslim family in Faridpur, British India, now a part of Bangladesh. She was married to noted Bengali musician Kamal Dasgupta, known for his contribtions to folk and Tumri styles of music. The couple had two sons Hamin Ahmed and Shafin Ahmed are also musicians, and currently associated with Bangladesh music scene. In 1979 Bangladesh honoured her with Independence Day Award, the highest state award given by the government of Bangladesh. Froza was a disciple of famous poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. She passed away on 9 September 2014 aged 84.
The artiste was born in Gopalganj on July 28, 1930 into a Zamindar family. Her family was zamindars of Ratail Ghonaparha. Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ismail and Begum Kaokabunnesa were her parents. When she was allowed to train in music, it was almost unthinkable for a Bengali Muslim girl to get approval from her family. Once Kazi Nazrul Islam was impressed by her voice at the age of 9 and he accepted her as his disciple. She met Kazi while she was auditioning at the HMV, at the encouragement of All India Radio's Sunil Bose.
At the age of 11 she made her debut in All India Radio and won many hearts by the rendition of two popular songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam. Since then she regularly performed in AIR and also recorded many music discs under HMV. She excelled in different forms of music such as Ghazals, Rabindra Sangeet, Quawali, Bhajans etc. She performed around 300 solo concerts. After partition she became a permanent citizen of Bangladesh. She was also the first chairman of Nazrul Institute.
Published: N/A
Updated: April 03, 2016
