Revision as of 10:53, 6 February 2022

An overview

1929-2022: A brief biography

[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/entertainment/hindi/rip-legend-veteran-singer-lata-mangeshkar-passes-away-heres-a-small-tribute-to-her/videoshow/89378219.cms Veteran singer Lata Mangeshkar passes away; a glimpse into her 8-decade long illustrious career/ India Times- The Times of India/ Feb 6, 2022#

Lata Mangeshkar, known as the 'Nightingale of India', is one of the most versatile singers in the Indian film industry. Lata was born on September 28, 1929, to classical singer and theatre artist Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar and Shevanti in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

She is the eldest of her four siblings, Meena, Asha Bhosle, Usha and Hridaynath Mangeshkar.

Lata Mangeshkar started her singing career at the age of 13 with Marathi movie 'Pahili Mangalaagaur' in 1942.

One of her first major hits was "Aayega Aanewaala," a song from the 1949 film 'Mahal,' lip-synced on screen by the late actress Madhubala.

Mangeshkar was only 20-years-old when she became the most sought after playback voice in the Hindi film industry. A decade later she sang the soulful number, Aaja Re Pardesi for Bimal Roy’s 1958 reincarnation saga ‘Madhumati’ which starred Vyjayanthimala in the lead.

K Asif’s magnum opus ‘Mughal-E-Azam’ which released in 1960 featured, Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya. While Madhubala conveyed the defiant Anarkali’s emotions, it was Mangeshkar’s voice which depicted the passion and rebellion. The same year also saw the release of the evergreen number, Ajeeb Dataan Hai… Be it Piya Tose Naina Lage Re, from the Waheeda Rahman starrer ‘Guide’ which released in 1965 or Hothon Pe Aisi Baat, featuring Vyjayanthimala, Mangeshkar lent her voice to every leading lady of the 1950s and the 60, the period considered to be the golden era of Hindi cinema.

Mangehskar was known for classical, folksy and even haunting numbers. But she surprised her fans when she sang Baahon Main Chele Aao, a sensual number from the 1972 film ‘Anamika’ composed by R D Burman.

The same year also saw the release of Kamal Amrohi’s ‘Pakeezah’. Actress Meena Kumari’s swan song in which essayed the role of a Lucknowi courtesan had some evergreen hit numbers.

Lata Didi, won her first National Award in the Best Female Playback singer category for the song Beeti Na Beetaye Raina, song from Gulzar’s 1972 film ‘Parichay’ … Two years later she bagged the National Award for the second time for the number, Roothe Roothe Piya from the film ‘Kora Kaagaz’, Gulzar’s 1977 film ‘Kinara’ featured this song composed by R D Burman. As the lyrics suggest Mangeshkar’s voice is what gave her identity and still does.

While the 80s saw Mangehskar deliver one hit after another, the 1990s saw the singer collaborate with her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar for Gulzar’s ‘Lekin’. This haunting song, Yaara Sili Sili won Mangeshkar her third National Award in the Best Female Playback singer category. While Lata Mangeshkar can evoke every emotion with effortless ease with her velvety voice,

few can evoke the patriotic fervour as effectively as her. Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon, the song which commemorated Indian soldiers who laid down their lives during the Sino-Indian war is believed to have reduced late Prime Minister Jawarlal Nehru to tears. Mangeshkar has sung for almost all the Yash Chopra films including Chandni in 1989, Lamhe in 1991 Darr… 1995 film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai in 1997, among others… In the late 90’s and 2000’s Mangeshkar collaborated with AR Rahman, for hits like Dil Se, Zubeida, Lagaan and Rang De Basanti …

Lata Mangeshkar has received several awards and accolades during her eight-decade-long career, including the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989, India's highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna in 2001, three National Awards and 7 Filmfare Awards. The Indian government honoured her with the Daughter of the Nation award on her 90th birthday in September 2019. Lata Mangeshkar’s voice has been a part of every Indian’s life for the past 8 decades. Her repertoire of work is unmatched and she is undoubtedly the golden voice of the country.

Lata Mangeshkar: In Her Own Voice

“Conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir”

From the archives of “India Today”, May 1, 2009

Kaveree Bamzai

The problem with legends sometimes is that we take them too seriously. We give them high-faluting names, put them in pretty, neatly labelled boxes and keep them on the national mantelpiece, right up there with the Republic Day honours and titles like the Nightingale of India or the Voice of the Millennium. Which is what makes Lata Mangeshkar: In Her Own Voice worth its wrist-bruising weight. It shows the woman beneath the aura, the eternal singing star, the soundtrack to our lives for the past 60 years, playing the slot machines in Las Vegas allnighters, while sipping on Coca-Cola. The book speaks of an era where music and lyrics meant something more than a marketing tool. Where makeovers mattered less than mastery over the song. And where the established powers did not eat their young, hungrily. In the course of conversations over several months, Nasreen Munni Kabir draws out Mangeshkar on the subject of her music directors, her early difficulties, her supposed rivalry with her sister, even her disappointment, if any, for never marrying.

For the first time, we hear Mangeshkar’s voice, not in the haunting elegiac tone of Mahal’s emblematic Aayega aanewala or in the playful naughtiness of Lara lappa lara lappa from Ek Thi Ladki, but as the woman who became the fulcrum for her family when she was in her teens after her father, a well-known theatre producer and actor, passed away. She speaks of the early days when she acted in Marathi films, submitting to the humiliation of having her hairline cut back and her eyebrows trimmed. She talks of how she bought her first radio at 18 but returned it the next day when the first she heard on it that her idol K.L. Saigal had passed away. She tells Kabir of how she fell asleep in her father’s lap at her first public performance at the age of nine in Sangli.

The hard struggle is accepted as philosophically as the tremendous fame. And yet there is the undeniable sorrow at the passing of an era. Of an age where music directors would collaborate with each other. How Naushad would record part of a song for Roshan and Roshan would record another for C. Ramchandra. How her guru, Ustad Aman Ali Khan Bhendibazaarwale, would make her eat an omelette wrapped in a roti before she sang, because she was so thin. How after a long day of recording, she, Jaikishen, Shankar, Hasrat Jaipuri and Shailendra would eat ice cream or trot off to Chowpatty to eat bhel puri.

It was a simpler, gentler, kinder time. Fans would just walk into Famous Studios at Tardeo upon hearing she was recording there. She could simply refuse Jawaharlal Nehru when he asked her to sing the famous Aye mere watan ke logon again for him at his Teen Murti home. Or even when cross with Raj Kapoor for first announcing and then not choosing her brother as music director, she would go to RK Studios, without addressing anyone, sing the title track of Satyam Shivam Sundaram in one take and walk off. This is a woman, remember, who had no formal education. Who had the responsibility of taking care of a mother and four siblings. Who countered criticism with pure hard work—when Dilip Kumar once told her that Maharashtrians don’t speak good Urdu, she quickly hired a maulana to teach her the language.

And who spent her childhood, before her father went bankrupt, being a frightful bother to everyone, sitting inside a tyre so the girls could roll her down the street, climbing trees to pick guavas and mangoes and walking around the neighbourhood hitting everyone with a stick. A woman who was independent, feisty, and successful entirely on her own terms. A woman who never gave up or gave in. And through it all, kept her girlish gold payals on.

Early life

Dawn

Meri Awaz Hi Pehchan Hai

By Sibtain Naqvi

Lata Mangeshkar

Everyone has their favourite Lata moment. Mine was in a heavy traffic jam in Karachi in searing heat. As rivulets of sweat coursed down my spine, I wearily turned on the radio and a sweet melody floated on the airwaves. Lag Ja Galay, the quintessential Lata song from the film Who Kaun Thi (1964), floated on the airwaves and at that moment the heat, smog, blaring horns and the loud curses of frustrated drivers all became distant. Music can indeed sooth the savage beast as in this case it did the irate driver.

Nobody including Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar could have predicted that his eldest offspring, Lata, born on September 28, 1929, would be given the title of ‘the Nightingale of India’.

When the seven-year-old played Narad to her father’s Arjun in Sholapur, little Lata brought the house down with her acting and singing, showing glimpses of the brilliance which would later light up the celluloid. She took her first music lessons from her father at the age of five and the recitals left a strong impression on her, as did the songs of K.L. Saigal, her favourite singer and idol.

According to a popular story, when little Lata came home after watching K.L. Saigal’s Chandidas directed by Nitin Bose, she declared that she would marry Saigal Sahib when she grew up. Hence began Indian filmdom’s most enduring love story between Lata Mangeshkar and Indian film music.

She started her Hindi singing career when she moved to then Bombay (Mumbai) in 1945 and played a minor role alongside Noor Jehan in Master Vinayak’s first Hindi-language film, Badi Maa. She began by imitating Noor Jehan, who with her heavy voice was then the most popular singer. The lyrics of songs in Hindi movies were primarily composed by Muslim poets such as Kaifi Azmi and Janisar Akhtar and contained a higher proportion of Urdu words. Dilip Kumar is said to have once gently chided Lata about her Maharashtri accent while singing Urdu songs. To overcome this predicament she took lessons in Urdu from a maulavi named Shafi.

Lata’s first major hit came in 1949 with Kamal Amrohvi’s film, Mahal. The song was Aayega Aanewala, composed by music director Khemchand Prakash and lip-synced on screen by actress Madhubala. The Venus-like Madhubala crooning for her lover in Lata’s melodious voice created such an everlasting piece of cinematic history that even today, nearly half-a-century later, it is clear why the song is such a sensation.

Moving sentiment is the hallmark of any Lata song. It is her ability to reach inside the lyrics, to probe the nuances of the moods, skillfully balancing changing cadences that make her so much in demand. She brings adaptability across generations and even within the lifespan of an artiste. Think of the wide-eyed child woman appeal of Dimple Kapadia in Hum tum aik kamray mein bundh hoon from the film Bobby and you think of Lata; recall the mature, sensitive Dimple in Yaara seeli seeli from the film Lekin and you still think of her. Trends have changed, technology has come to play a crucial role yet the classic has remained with Lata.

Lata Mangeshkar1

Yash Chopra rightfully says, “Usually, it is an artist who follows the art. But in Lataji’s case it’s the art that has followed her.”

Many compositions were written only for her voice. When Naushad composed Mohe Panghat Pe for the epic Mughal-i-Azam, he called Lata aside and said, “I’ve created this tune only because you are going to render this song. No one else can do justice to this composition.”

Lata was understandably the preferred choice for the leading ladies of her time. From Madhubala to Madhuri, all owe their biggest musical hits to her voice and while they themselves have phased out, Lata continues to fire romance, pain, hope and nationalism with her soulful renditions. No wonder the late Bade Ghulam Ali Khan once exclaimed, “Kambakht toh kabhi besuri hi nahin hoti!” (Dammit, she never sings out of tune).

Still, the living legend’s career has not been without controversy. It’s ironic that once Noor Jehan immigrated to Pakistan and Surriya and Shamshad Begum retired, her biggest rival was her sister Asha Bhosle. With S.D. Burman, Lata had a blow hot-blow cold relationship and the main beneficiary of this was Asha.

Before 1957, S.D. Burman chose Lata for his musical scores in many films including House No. 44 (1955) and Devdas (1955). However, they had a fallout in 1957 and Lata did not sing Burman’s compositions till 1962, with the result that Asha and to a lesser extent Geeta Dutt took over. Asha also became the chosen singer for O.P. Nayyar and for sometime the two sisters’ relationship went through testing times.

Lata’s relationship with most of her male colleagues was cordial. Mukesh, Manna De, Hermant Kumar all worked with her to give memorable numbers. With Kishore Kumar it was especially so, ever since she assumed the worst and mistook him for a lecher following her on her way to meet Khemchand Prakash for whom she sang Aayega Aanewala.

However, with the colossus of her time, Mohd Rafi, she did not see eye to eye. Perhaps as the two leading voices in the industry there was a certain amount of friction, but the issue came to the fore because of a money dispute. Lata wanted singers to get half of the five per cent that the music director got from the producer. Rafi took the moral high ground that a playback singer’s claim on the film-maker ended with the payment of the agreed fee for the song. If the song flopped the singer had already been paid his fee for rendering it.

During the recording of the song Tasveer Teri Dil Mein from the film Maya, (1961), the two were not on speaking terms and Lata even lost her temper at him. Both refused to sing with the other. Later, at the insistence of S.D. Burman, although they decided to make up and sing together, but on a personal level they were not on cordial terms.

She won her first Filmfare best female playback award for Sahil Chowdhury’s composition Aaja Re Pardesi, from Madhumati (1958) and her second in 1962, for the song Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil from Bees Saal Baad, composed by Hemant Kumar. In 1969, she declined any further awards to give room to other artistes. In 2001, Lata Mangeshkar was awarded Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, only the second vocalist to receive it. As Lata celebrates her 79th birthday today, her song rings even more true, encapsulating all that she is:

Naam bhool jaye ga; Chehra yeh badal jaye ga; Meri awaz hi pehchan hai….

1939: first musical show, at age 9

Ambarish Mishra, May 19, 2019: The Times of India

It was eighty summers ago that Lata Mangeshkar, then all of nine, presented her first musical show on a sultry evening in 1939. The GenNext of the Mangeshkar clan is rejoicing over the 80th anniversary of the diva’s Solapur concert, and a do at her Pedder Road residence is on cards. “It’s unbelievable how time flies. I think it happened only last month,” Mangeshkar told TOI over the telephone.

Having begun her riyaaz at age five under her father, legendary actor-singer Master Dinanath Mangeshkar, Lata was keen on performing on stage in keeping with the popular jalsa (public concert) tradition of yore. Opportunity came her way when her father, who presided over a repertory theatre company, pitched his tent in Solapur in 1939.

“Several music aficionados once came home with a proposal for jalsa. I overheard the conversation and promptly told Baba (father) that I too would share the honours with him. Baba laughed off my suggestion, You are too young for a public concert’,” reminisced Mangeshkar, the 2002 recipient of Bharat Ratna, for her sterling contribution to popular music.

The sponsors grabbed the idea with both hands though. They told Dinanathraoji that it would be a unique concert featuring two generations of the Mangeshkar family. Having finally got a nod from her father, Lata rushed to a nearby studio and finalised a photo shoot the following day. The Bhagwat Chitra Mandir auditorium was packed to capacity for what the sponsors had advertised as the ‘Pita-Putri (father-daughter) jalsa, a unique show’. Lata sang a composition in Raag Khambawati followed by a song from one of her father’s popular Marathi plays.

Having earned a prolonged applause from a select gathering of music buffs, and a couple of admiring glances from Master Dinanathrao, Lata subsequently sat next to her father.Soon, Master Dinanathrao began to deliver his trademark dazzling taans which reverberated through Bhagwat Chitra Mandir while Lata, her head rested on her father’s lap, went off to sleep. “I was a tad tired,” she said. Four years later, Lata sang for a Marathi film produced by Master Vinayak Karnataki following her father’s sudden death in 1942. In 1947, she joined Hindi cinema as playback singer and within a year the melody queen was belting out a string of hit songs. The rest, as they say, is history. “The Solapur jalsa very is close to my heart,” she says.

Politics

Pays tribute to Savarkar

Ambarish Mishra, May 29, 2019: The Times of India

Lata chides Savarkar’s detractors

Mumbai:

Lata Mangeshkar paid glowing tributes to Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to commemorate his 136th birth anniversary. The melody queen and her family have been staunch followers of Savarkar.

In a series of tweets, Lata described Savarkar as a “deshbhakt” (patriot) and a “swabhimani” (a proud soul). “Aaj Swantrya Veer Savarkar-ji ki jayanti hai. Main unke vyaktitva ko, unki desh bhakti ko pranam karti hoon (Today is Swatantrya Veer Savarkar’s birth anniversary. I pay my respects to his personality and his patriotism),” she tweeted.

Chiding the freedom fighter’s detractors, Lata said, “These days, some people speak against Veer Savarkar, but they don’t know how towering a patriot and a proud soul he was.” In another tweet, Lata posted a link of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s famous 1988 speech on Savarkar. Paying tributes to Savarkar, Vajpayee had recalled the latter’s committment to India and his sacrifices for the cause of freedom.

Lata also recalled Savarkar’s songs which she sang along with her brother, Pandit Hridayanath, and sisters Meena, Asha and Usha. Her ties with Savarkar date back to the 1930s when Master Dinanath, Lata’s father and an accomplished singer-actor who owned a theatre company, performed Savarkar’s plays across Maharashtra.