Lata Mangeshkar is a phenomena that can be viewed in two ways. The first considers sheer numbers, with the prolific megastar playback singer having lent her voice to over 27,000 songs in 36 languages, dominated the conscious minds of mainstream cinema since the late 1940s, and outlived nearly all of her contemporaries and scores of playback singers who emerged over the years, according to her estimate. The other is the storey of a lady who, against all odds, would have barely made it in a cutthroat field where patronage often determined one's level of success. Not only that, but for more than four decades, she was known as the pivotal figure in Hindi film music.
More than anything else, Lata Mangeshkar not only achieved dizzying heights of success that few other playback singers have ever achieved, but she also became synonymous with singing for millions of people all over the world.
Everything's just as daring and difficult to discuss Lata Mangeshkar's career or even attempt to capture it in a single homage as it is to handpick a collection of songs that best express her spirit. Lata ji stands out from the rest of the playback singers in her death, just as she did in her life. Lata Mangeshkar's death would never reduce the influence she had on Indian cinema during her lifetime, much like how she became known as the 'voice of India' throughout the course of her seven-decade career.
Lata Mangeshkar was the eldest of the couple's five children, Meena Khadikar, Asha Bhosle, Usha Mangeshkar, and Hridaynath Mangeshkar, and was born on September 28, 1929, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, to Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, a Marathi classical singer and musician, and Shevanti. Her birth name was 'Hema,' but she changed it after 'Latika,' a female character in one of her creations, Bhaaw Bandhan. In her early years, she was trained by her father and also appeared in Deenanath's musicals. Deenanath's unexpected death in 1942, when Lata was 13, was a tragedy for the Mangeshkar family. Master Vinayak, the Marathi star, aided the family and introduced young Lata to the world of cinema singing. She appeared in a few films in the early 1940s, both acting and singing. Lata began professional study in Hindustani classical music with Ustad Aman Ali Khan after the family relocated to Bombay in 1945. Lata performed for composers like Datta Davjekar and Vasant Desai in her early years, for films like Aap Ki Seva Mein (1946) and Subhadra (1946). She also appeared in the 1945 film Badi Maa, which also starred Asha Bhosle.
Lata's voice lacked the heaviness of singers like Noor Jehan and Shamshad Begum in an era when heaviness was the standard. For leading ladies, the high-pitched voice was seen 'too thin.' When composer Ghulam Haider recommended Lata for Shaheed, producer Sashadhar Mukherjee rejected her for this reason (1949). After Master Vinayak's death, Haider coached Lata, ensuring that the young singer did not lose confidence in the face of such rejection. With 'Dil mera toda, mujhe kahin ka na chhora,' Haider gave Lata her first break in Majboor (1948).
Urdu dominated film songs in the 1950s, and Lata was scolded for her pronunciation. After Dilip Kumar criticised her accent on one occasion, Lata sought diction lessons for a period. During the recording of Lata's first huge hit, 'Aayega aanewaala,' for Mahal (1949), the legendary Jaddanbai Hussain, a pioneering vocalist and composer, complemented the singer on her diction. In Yatindra Mishra's landmark biography, Lata Sur-Gatha, the singer recalls Jaddanbai and her daughter, Nargis, being shocked that she was a Maharashtrian and informing her that the way she said 'baigair' in the line 'deepak bagair kaise parwane jal rahein hai' was out of this world.
Lata ji made a bold move by changing her singing technique, which was influenced by Noor Jehan, and perfecting her projection to overcome the limitations of the time's technology. It turned Lata Mangeshkar into a force that could not be slowed down by things like lousy recording and so on. If the 1950s were a decade in which filmmakers shaped India's storey through films like Awara (1951), Deedar (1951), Aan (1952), Do Bigha Zamin (1953), Shree 420 (1955), Madhumati (1958), Paying Guest (1957), Mother India (1957), to name a few, the storey of Lata's rise and success was also penned at the same time. Lata Mangeshkar sang almost 200 songs in a single decade, the 1950s!
In many ways, Lata's tale and that of India have become interchangeable, so it's no surprise that she became known as the 'voice of India.' From the 1950s through the 2000s, her voice became the voice of most A-list actresses, and she and her sister Asha were among the few playback singers in the world to sing for not only actresses from different eras, but also three generations of performers in the same family. After providing her voice to Kajol's mother, Tanuja, and grandmother, Shobhana Samarth, Lata Mangeshkar performed for her in the 1990s.
Not unexpectedly, rumours about Lata Mangeshkar's monopolistic mentality arose as a result of her dominance. The limited shelf life of vocalists like Suman Kalyanpur, Vani Jairam, Sulakshana Pandit, Priti Sagar, and Hemlata has been linked to Lata ji leveraging her clout and popularity to persuade music directors to elbow them out throughout the years. There's also a lot of industry lore regarding Lata and Asha's strong rivalry and how Lata undermined her sister at times. 'Ae mere watan ke logon,' the song meant to heal Indians in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, was originally conceived as a duet by Kavi Pradeep. Despite this, Lata expressed interest in singing it as a solo, according to Raju Bharatan, the author of A Journey Down Melody Lane. However, on the song's fiftieth anniversary in 2013, Lata ji revealed that she had initially declined the song because she was too busy, and later pitched it as a duet with her sister, but Asha Bhosle refused to join despite Herculean efforts.
It is only natural to have ups and downs in a life as amazing as Lata Mangeshkar's and a career as extensive as hers. Lata ji has received practically every imaginable accolade, including India's top cinema and civilian honours, the Dada Saheb Phalke (1989) and the Bharat Ratna (2001). She was the first Indian to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in 1974. Regardless of what is factual and what is imagined, millions of Indians and music fans around the world have always had a Lata number accessible to best express each moment in their life during the epoch-making trip. This is what makes Lata Mangeshkar's mythology so endearing, and we should be grateful for it.
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