His voice remained a reference to perfection for many generations of musicians and listeners.
How to describe a person like Lata Mangeshkar? A singer who has a career spanning eight decades and has sung innumerable songs in 36 languages. It is a voice that has documented the Indian imagination and remains a reference to perfection for many generations of musicians and listeners. Javed Akhtar and Gulzar come to the rescue. “When you are talking about Michelangelo, Beethoven or Shakespeare, the name says it all. Lata Mangeshkar’s greatness lies in her name. There is no other word that can surround her,” Javed Akhtar once said. Gulzar’s lines in the song ‘Naam Gam Jayega’ – ‘Meri voice is my identity’ – sums it up beautifully.
Stories abound about this legendary artist, who turned 92 last month. Lata started her career at the age of 13 and remained unstoppable for the next several decades. She was also regional. The artist, who managed to surpass all other musicians in success and stature, said surprisingly: “I could never listen to my songs,” and explained, “If I listened to them, I think I would be so much better. could, applied my creative mind, gave it a high rendering.” It is hard to imagine that a composer of his caliber is so self-critical of his work, in contrast to the narcissism that is often accused. “I can sometimes listen to my Meera Bhajan and Dhyaneshwari. But beyond that…,” her laughter stops.
This could be the main reason why Lata is able to invest herself so much in every song she sings, as if it were her first song. For him every song should be better than before. In another context, she had said, “Music is my life. I don’t have anything else. Even today – after all these years – I am afraid that musicians will be unhappy with my singing. The world disappears when I start singing.” Once, when Lata was on her way to recording, she saw two income tax officers waiting in her drawing room. It was a tax complication and she had to Cars had to be snatched. “Will you allow me to drop you off at the studio?” he asked before signing the papers and leaving for the recording. He said the matter didn’t come to his mind even for a minute a day.
sisters
Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle exchanged notes.
“It is true that as a family we stopped talking to Asha after her first marriage. My mother didn’t approve of it,” Lata said, but insisted that it never turned into personal jealousy, as the world made it. “We were both in the same profession and there could be minor differences. But people tried to provoke a quarrel between us. Thankfully we always sorted things out our way.”
“Asha is the more versatile singer,” Lata had announced during her 80th birthday celebrations. While it is true that Asha has flamboyance and charm, it is equally true that listening to a duet like ‘Kar gaya mujhe par jadu’ from the movie, Basant Bahari (1956), ‘Ah Le Gayi’ (flame, unpublished, 1958), and from the film ‘Mann Kyun Bahka’, Celebration (1984), It is difficult to say who is superior.
Actually, when Lata started singing due to family compulsions, many people in the industry did not approve of her melodious voice. Shamshad Begum, Noor Jahan, Amirbai Karnataki, Geeta Dutt and others dominated the music scene with their stellar vocals. Ghulam Haider, one of the leading music directors of the time, literally fought for Lata for a place in an industry that had turned her down. Lata considers him as her godfather, without whose support and tireless efforts she would not have achieved what she did.
“That was difficult. My carefree days came to an abrupt end,” Lata recalled in a television interview. She was a mischievous young girl, always playing in the streets and stealing fruit from a neighbor’s garden, if she hadn’t taken music lessons. Her father, Pt. Dinanath Mangeshkar, was teaching his students. “I used to sit on the kitchen shelf, singing continuously as my mother cooked. My mother would get irritated and would often say, ‘Can’t you keep quiet? Can?!’ The sudden demise of his father forced him to assume the position of breadwinner. “I was ready to sing, act … so that I could support the family. The studio was very far from Malad station. Everyone who went there used to take a tongo, but I used to walk. I’ll save money to buy vegetables on the way back. During the lunch break people used to go to the canteen to eat or have a cup of tea, but I never. I would starve all day so that I would have money to run my family. “
The story of Lata Mangeshkar, like that of Karnataka legend MS Subbulakshmi, is at once a tale of individual victories and also how women changed the course of the performance of history. There were other extraordinary women who, through their extraordinary artistry, forced the male-dominated world of art to pay attention to them. But these two women of pre-independence India were the only ones who took the country forward with their voices. No one knows where to start discussing them, which in itself is a testament to the enormous work they have created. The true worth of an artist like Lata is judged by her contribution to Indian history and the evolution of the genre of film music.
Journalists from Bangalore write on art and culture.
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