LIKE THE BACK OF HER HAND Bhosle is known and loved by millions around the world.

Photograph: Jack Vartoogian/Frontrow Photos

Asha Bhosle seems frustrated with her English. Her accent clings to sentences that come in a rhythmic patter of fits and starts. No doubt she’s still jet-lagged from her long flight to the U.S. Nevertheless, the 74-year-old singer, whose 13,000 recordings would entitle her to be the most jaded musician on the planet, insists on talking about Carnegie Hall before she will hang up the phone. “No, it’s not my first time, but Carnegie Hall is Carnegie Hall,” she says. “My sister and I saw this place once in a film and we said, ‘Oh my God! It’s so large. When we’re big singers, we will perform there.’ It was my dream.”

Those Bombay girls, Bhosle and her sister, Lata Mangeshkar, did become big singers—among the biggest of the 20th century. Mangeshkar found her way to Carnegie Hall for a performance in 1975. Bhosle’s old feelings of awe could inspire a transcendent concert when she makes her second appearance at the venerable institution this week. The Bollywood icon first appeared there two years ago while on tour with Kronos Quartet; their collaborative album, You’ve Stolen My Heart, presented witty, gentrified arrangements of songs by the late Rahul Dev Burman, a famed musical director and Bhosle’s second husband. It also brought her to audiences beyond her predominantly Indian and Indian-American core, who have packed far huger (if less posh) venues, such as Nassau Coliseum, to hear Bhosle in the past decade. This time, however, she’ll revisit her hits with typical Bollywood flair; a musical tiger with a youthful voice and looks, Bhosle has enlisted a capable foil in Amit Kumar, son of Kishore Kumar, with whom she recorded dozens of romantic duets.

Bhosle’s career as a playback singer—the term refers to the unseen talents who voice songs for Bollywood’s onscreen stars—began at the age of nine with the 1943 film Majha Bal. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that she started to gain notoriety. The Bombay film industry was gathering momentum as an important postcolonial force, economically and culturally. The introduction of cassettes in the following decade would help make the new sounds of electric guitars and drum synthesizers ubiquitous.

“This was the environment that allowed Asha Bhosle to hit the charts and Rahul Dev Burman to fire up the libido of an entirely new generation entering their youth in a ‘free India,’ ” explains K. Hariharan, director of the L.V. Prasad Film & TV Academy in Chennai, India, and a regular visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2005. “For this young generation, which ran parallel to the baby boomers in the U.S., it was cool to be profane. Lata had the Hindi film-music industry in a virtual stranglehold, but the soul in her songs was just too perfect for comfort. So in retaliation against the sacred tone of Lata came Asha, a unique product of the times.”

“The old people were very angry,” remembers Bhosle, “but I liked that music. I loved Elvis Presley. I loved the Beatles. I loved every foreign singer. Slowly, everyone took the rhythm and the flavor of English music.”

Unlike her sister’s angels of virtue, Bhosle often sang from the vantage point of women of questionable character: ones involved in love triangles, gambling schemes and even impersonating the dead. But it wasn’t just her affinity for rock that thrust her into these singing roles. It’s no coincidence that Bhosle’s professional life mirrored her personal story of bucking tradition: She married her first husband as a teen, against the wishes of her parents, and courageously abandoned him when she could no longer take his physical abuse. She had two small children and a third on the way.

What’s more, Bhosle’s spiritual kinship with the West led her to tour before enterprising marketing execs had invented the “world music” genre. “I toured America in 1976 because there were so many Indian people here,” Bhosle says. “They had listened to my songs back home when they were young, so they remembered me and would come to see me.” The ’60s generation caught up in India’s youth movement also happened to be the first batch of immigrants allowed entry into the U.S., and Bhosle’s frequent visits have been a touchstone for the diaspora community.

Ironically, hearing this behind-the-scenes megastar in concert is a privilege that few in her homeland have ever had. When she’s in India, the demands of the recording studio are simply too strong. “I start early in the morning and don’t finish until 11 or 12 at night,” Bhosle explains. Still, she enjoys herself onstage and has started to ease off of her film schedule in favor of album projects—like the compilation 75 Years of Asha (Times Square Records), due this month, and a CD of entirely new compositions coming later this year. For now, she’s content to get her applause at Carnegie Hall—and, as she puts it, “to see my people in America, so many years here. And I like to see America also. Everything is here.”

Asha Bhosle plays Carnegie Hall Apr 17, 2008.