Bina Addy

Bina Addy was from Calcutta, from a Bengali Christian family; two of her brothers became college professors.^[1] Her voice first attracted notice in a church choir in Calcutta. She studied music in Europe after 1928, with Elena Gerhardt in Leipzig and Mario Cotogni in Rome.^[2]

Addy was considered a mezzo-soprano or contralto singer.^[3][4] She was promoted as the first Indian woman to study Western music in Europe,^[5] and the first to become a professional singer touring internationally.^[6][7] She performed on BBC radio broadcasts between 1929 and 1932.^[8][9] In 1931, the League of Nations Union in Croydon held a reception for Addy, where she performed.^[10]

Addy sang in concerts, on radio, and at benefits for the YWCA and other organizations, in Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s.^[2][11][12] She was involved in the centenary celebrations in South Australia in 1936.^[13] Her programs were mainly Bengali songs, including works by Rabindranath Tagore,^[14] but she sometimes included British folk songs, African-American spirituals, Italian arias, and German lieder.^[15] She also gave short talks during her programs, about Gandhi, Tagore, and other Indian topics. She was often accompanied by women musicians.^[6] "Her technique is assured and well-founded, and with this she associates an impressive sense of style," noted one Australian critic in 1937.^[16]

"It is my sincere desire to create a better understanding between my country and other nations," she told an interviewer in 1937, "and if I could feel that I had in any way provided a link between the East and the West, I should be content."^[2]