| Mumbai |September 28, 2020 9:10:40 am
Lata Mangeshkar celebrates her 91st birthday at the moment. (Picture: Categorical Archive)
Lata Mangeshkar’s first recorded track was in 1942. She was solely 13. It was for a Marathi film however was later dropped from the album. Regardless of each filmmaker’s greatest efforts to have not less than one ditty sung by THE Lata Mangeshkar, nowadays the nightingale not often enters the studio – her “temple”, within the immortal phrases of Naushad. Her final recorded track was in 2015, in an Indo-Pak homosexual love story. From 1942 to 2015, that’s a record-shattering 73 years of steady playback and solely Mangeshkar, the excessive priestess of Bollywood singing, might have managed that momentous feat. For 73 years, and even longer, she has regaled music listeners along with her mellifluous voice and in whole domination as Bollywood’s main singer who, like a juggernaut, crushed each competitors that got here her manner. Movie magazines like Stardust had a reputation for it – the “Mangeshkar monopoly.” Between Lata and her youthful sister and media-pitted rival Asha Bhosle, there was hardly any house for the third lady standing.
Lata Mangeshkar was born right into a household of performers. Her father ran a theatre firm and the Mangeshkar sisters grew up in awe of music. By pursuing singing, the sisters wished to hold ahead their father’s wealthy legacy. They had been classically educated. From a really younger age, Mangeshkar might sing Raag Puriya Dhanashree with full command. It was her father who found Lata’s actual expertise. “A selected incident sparked off my singing,” the singing legend recalled in an previous interview with Stardust. “It so occurred that after my father requested his shagird (disciple) to practise a raag whereas he completed some work. I used to be taking part in close by and all of a sudden a notice of the raag that shagird was rendering, jarred. And the following minute, I used to be correcting him. When my father returned, he found a shagird in his personal daughter.” Reportedly, Lata’s father mentioned to her mom, “We have now a singer at house. We by no means knew it.”
By way of the 1950s and 60s, Lata Mangeshkar sang in each style. (Picture: Categorical Archive)
Some years after her father’s demise, Lata moved to Mumbai. Initially, she was mentored and nurtured by Grasp Vinayak, a filmmaker of the 1930s and a household buddy of the Mangeshkars and in addition by Ghulam Haider, who is thought for giving Lata her first break. Lata’s preliminary competitors got here within the form of Suraiya, Shamshad Begum and particularly, Noor Jehan who was thought-about the critics’ darling at a time, a greater singer than Lata. In a 2004 essay for Outlook journal, veteran music author Raju Bharatan puzzled if Lata would “have attained the ‘tremendous’ standing she did if Noor Jehan (because the ‘brighter’ voice) had chosen to remain on in India after Partition?” Bharatan requested the identical query to Naushad (who gave Lata the unforgettable gems equivalent to Tu ganga ki mauj in Baiju Bawra and Pyaar kiya toh darna kya in Mughal-E-Azam). Naushad felt that Noor Jehan’s transfer to Pakistan destroyed any possibilities of her pan-India enchantment. “As soon as Noor Jehan opted to base herself in Lahore slightly than Bombay,” Naushad defined to Bharatan, “the vary and number of composers who got here to work on her vocals grew to become robotically restricted. Since Noor Jehan now not loved the supreme benefit Lata did—of music administrators hailing from 13 states of India bringing to her vocals a treasure trove of tunes. Thus Noor Jehan fatally typed herself as a Punjabi-Urdu singer. Whereas Lata Mangeshkar grew to become the cosmopolitan voice of all Hindustan, consultant of every praanth from Maharashtra to Orissa.” And but, it was Naushad who requested her to sing like Noor Jehan for Mehboob Khan’s Andaz (1949)!
The track, Aayega aana waala from Mahal made certain that Lata was right here to remain. By way of the 1950s and 60s, she sang in each style, from bhajans like Allah tero naam and dance numbers like Hoton pe aisi baat to moony romantic tunes like Lag jaa gale and patriotic ditties like Aye mere watan ke brand.
Of all music administrators, there’s little question as to who Lata’s favorite was. “I shared a particular relationship with Madan Mohan, which was rather more than what a singer and a music composer share. This was a relationship of a brother and a sister,” she mentioned in a 2011 collector’s merchandise calendar referred to as Tere Sur Aur Mere Geet. “He trusted me to sing his greatest compositions,” she went on, itemizing Woh chup rahe from Jahan Ara as their favorite collaboration.
Lata Mangeshkar ‘shared a particular relationship with Madan Mohan.’ (Picture: Categorical Archive)
In later years, she developed an identical brotherly relationship with Yash Chopra, for whom she sang a few of her most memorable latter-day songs. Their collaboration has yielded such hits as Dhool Ka Phool, Kabhi Kabhie, Silsila and Dil Toh Pagal Hai. She even labored with Chopra’s son, Aditya, on Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge. Maybe, Dilip Kumar, whom she addresses as her older brother, mentioned it greatest when he remarked, “None have been in a position to equal Lata’s refinement. It is rather troublesome for anybody to compete along with her as a result of she has invested so closely in each one who cares for music – there’s so many Lata Mangeshkar in everybody.”
(Shaikh Ayaz is a author and journalist primarily based in Mumbai.)
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