Shahida Parveen who died in 13th March 2003 was not even fifty. Her mother Zahida Parveen too must have been in her late forties or early fifties when she died in 1975.

Zahida Parveen was very keen to see her daughter get the best music education and she made her the shagird of Ustad Akhtar Hussain Khan, the father of Ustads Amanat Ali Khan and Fateh Ali Khan. She was only being true to a tradition because she herself was the shagird of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan and thus continued with the tutelage of the Patiala Gharana. After the death of Akhtar Hussain Khan, Shahida Parveen became the shagird of Ustad Chotay Ghulam Ali Khan who was from the Qawwal Bachon Ka Gharana.

If mother and daughter are both musicians the instant response is to draw a comparison between the two. And in this particular case both being vocalists, more or less following the same ang, the critical comparison can be a method of assessment and an identification of a slight difference in style. Zahida Parveen was initiated into music by Baba Taaj Kapoorthalawale saranginawaz and Hussain Buksh Khan saranginawaz from Amritsar before she became the shagird of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan.

Zahida Parveen was from Amritsar and she rose to prominence early as she had acquired enough proficiency over a number of forms. She was particularly adept at singing the kaafi and to music lovers she was one of the greatest exponents of the kaafi. For the connoisseurs she was much more than that and her rendition of the kheyal, thumri and ghazal too were of equal importance. She sang the kaafi formalistically in raagdaari as the musical variations of the bols were based on the principles of progression in the raag.

If Shahida Parveen was a lesser singer than her mother then some of the causes can be laid at the door of the times that she lived in. She was usually referred to as the last of the female classical vocalists in times when there were very few takers of classical music and probably she found the demands on her time and energy not being compensated enough either in financial or critical terms.

For years Roshan Ara Begum stood along the leading vocalists, and head and shoulders above the female vocalists with none that could even be a distant second. She lived mostly in Lalamusa, a small town in the Punjab and only performed in Lahore or other bigger cities on invitation. Yet the level that she had achieved in her early years stood her in good stead and even with the minimum of riyaaz she rose up to the challenges of live performances.

After Roshan Ara Begum's death it was said that if there was any female vocalist to fill the void it was Shahida Parveen. But the conditions were such that there was not enough motivation for her to pursue this difficult task all on her own. She was the type that needed support, encouragement and goading, and was not made of the material where she could continue on her own with a crusade like spirit, the odds only stoking the fires of creativity.

Probably like many of us she too waited for the opportunity to arrive and the conditions to become conducive but she was disappointed as she kept waiting like the most of us. The external conditions became less favourable, getting from bad to worse, making it even more difficult for a person of her temperament to go it alone.

Shahida Parveen usually sang items made popular by her mother. For the people with a more popular taste there was also this demand for her to sing the kaafis which her mother had made famous but to others, though a diminishing breed, it was important for her to sing the khayal. She did so on occasions specifically designed for such singing and at times she performed quite well, manifesting the years of training that she had put in. Her repertoire was not limited, but in public she sang only a few raags, constantly underestimating her training and talent.

She could sing multani very well, a difficult raag because capturing the correct nuance of rikhab is the test of a singer, but one wonders how many times she sang it. She usually limited herself to bagheshri, aimen, megh and malkauns, the raags more commonly sung and was not pushed hard enough to exposed a bigger repertoire that she had been trained to acquire. The kaafis like sohne yaar bahzoon meri nahin sardi, kiya haal sunawaan dil da koi mehram raaz na milda, dukhi dilre dardaan maari were sung very well by her mother.

Zahida Parveen had great command over the craft and she sang with a certain abandon. The range of her voice easily traversed the three registers. Shahida Parveen on the other hand never sang with that kind of abandon and the range of her voice was limited.

After the death of Roshan Ara Begum at least it was said that Shahida Parveen could step in her shoes but now with the death of Shahida Parveen such an optimistic prediction cannot be made about even a single female vocalists who sings professionally on the media to larger audiences.

(Source: http://www.sadarang.com/Tribute%20Shahida%20Parveen.htm ) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.