The Genius Of Lata Mangeshkar

Where does an ocean begin? Where does it end? Where did it come from, and which way does it go? These questions are irrelevant because the ocean submerges everything that it wishes to. It is where it is, and that’s reality. Lata Mangeshkar was an ocean of sur. For the film world, especially the Hindi film music industry, female vocal prowess is measured on the Lata Mangeshkar scale. There have been and will be many greats, but they will always be compared to the incredible scale of her talent and legacy.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of our independence, it’s helpful to remind us that Lata Mangeshkar’s career also took wings around the time that India became free. She made her singing debut in  Hindi films with “Pa Lagoon Kar Jori Re Shyam” for Vasant Joglekar’s movie Aap Ki Seva Mein in 1946. She arrived at a time when there were stalwarts like Noorjehan, Samshad Begum and Suraiya, and the singing style was different. Starting from Zohrabai and Amirbai, the throaty thick, voiced rendition was in vogue, and Lata was a complete misfit with her thin voice.

“Aayega Aanewala” from Mahal in 1949, which was picturized on Madhubala, was her first hit song, and then the juggernaut never stopped. Not many know that the actress-comedian Tun Tun was first offered this song as she was also a playback singer then, known by her real name Uma Devi, but she turned down the song due to contractual obligations. The rest is history.

Mehboob Khan’s Andaz in the same year was a massive hit, and Lata was the voice of the female lead Nargis and Samshad Begum gave voice to the supporting actress Cuckoo. The film was the biggest grossing film of the decade, and Naushad’s music and Lata’s songs were a huge hit. One can hear the style of Noorjehan in some of her songs in the film, but the next film changed everything. Two months after Andaz came another record-breaking blockbuster, Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat. It launched maestros Shankar-Jaikishan, and their super hit music had Lata singing for Nargis and Nimmi. Not a single song had Samshad Begum’s voice. The Lata magic had arrived.

Lata was brought up in a family steeped in classical music. She started her formal training under Ustad Aman Ali Khan of Bhindibazaar Gharana in 1945 when she moved to Mumbai from Kolhapur in search of a career. After her father’s early death, the 16-year-old had no choice but to support her family of four siblings from a young age. After a few false starts, music director Ghulam Haider took her under his wings, recommending her to filmmakers and music directors. Some of them were critical of her accented Hindi, a legacy of growing up in Kolhapur. A determined Lata took Hindi and Urdu lessons to smooth the rough edges.

After the success of Andaz and Barsaat, she firmly established herself in the Hindi films, and by the early 1950s, she was already the dominant female singer in the industry. Ghulam Haider’s now-famous prophecy in response to film producer Sashadhar Mukherjee’s rejection of Lata as playback in his film because of her “thin voice” was that in the years to come, filmmakers would fall at her feet to have her sing in their films. It had come true. There was no single filmmaker or music director in the Hindi film industry who didn’t want to work with her.

Filmfare instituted the Best Playback Singer award in 1959. It was not surprising that Lata was the first winner, for “Aaja Re Pardesi” from the film Madhumati set to music by Salil Chowdhury. She won three more of these awards over the next eight years. She was the only female singer in contention for the award until 1967; as a result, she lost out in many of the years to male singers. The Best Singer category was split between gender categories in 1968, and Lata by then had enough of these kinds of honors and declared that she should not be considered for the award anymore.

Through the time period of the Sixties and Nineties, she remained the indomitable voice of the leading ladies in the industry. Actresses aged and passed into celluloid history, but she molded her voice to suit the style of three generations of stars. It’s incredible to even wrap our head around the fact that she started singing for the likes of Madhubala and Nargis in the late Forties and Fifties, followed up with Meena Kumari, Asha Parekh, Waheeda Rehman in the Sixties, Jaya Bhaduri, Sharmila Tagore, Neetu Singh, Zeenat Aman, Mumtaz, Hema Malini in the Seventies, Padmini Kolhapure, Meenakshi Seshadri, Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi and many more in the Eighties, and finally ending her film singing career with the likes of Madhuri Dixit, Raveena Tandon, Kajol (Lata had lent her voice to Kajol’s mom Tanuja and aunt Nutan) and Preity Zinta.

Her sheer longevity against a background of changing style, instrumentation, arrangements and technology is staggering. From walking towards the microphone to sing in Mahal (as sound effects etc. were non-existent then) to digitized music and recording, she had generations humming with her.

She often worked with music directors across two generations — father and son duos, Burmans, with Roshan and his son Rajesh Roshan, and Chitragupt’s sons Anand-Milind. Music composers used to create tunes for her voice. Each one competed to get Lata to sing their best compositions. From Naushad, C. Ramachander, Madan Mohan, S.D. Burman, Shankar-Jaikishan, to Laxmikant-Pyarelal, R.D. Burman, Rajesh Roshan, Nadeem Shravan, A.R. Rahman, the list is extensive and lengthy.

If she waded comfortably through the tuneful melodies and standard compositions under the baton of the greats, she also wrested and masterfully performed challenging compositions like “Tu Chanda Main Chandni” by Jaidev, or the Bhairavi composition “Sanware Sanware” by Pt Ravi Shankar, “Saajan Bin Neend” Na Aave by S.D. Burman, or “Mohe Panghat Pe” in Raag Gara composed by classical maestro Naushad and so many more.

She was also a fierce competitor, and stories and rumors of her stifling competition or being demanding with filmmakers and producers are plenty. But the truth be told, she made her place in an unforgiving industry, where audiences have a short memory and the powers that be can have even shorter memories. She staved off competition for over five decades. While composers and singers came and left or faded around her, her voice remained relevant and infallible. I cannot think of any other voice from the industry that could transcend time and generations with such ease.

There have been many contenders for the top spot in female vocalists through the decades, but somehow, they didn’t measure up. Vani Jairam, Sulakshana Pandit, Runa Laila, Anuradha Paudwal and others tried, had varying degrees of success but still fell short. Even the great Geeta Dutt — with a gifted voice and a singing style that was rich, melodic, spontaneous and natural — was reduced to playing second fiddle in the 1950s as music director after music director sought out Lata.  

While faultless in playback mode, Lata’s voice could easily pull off a classical thumri with equal ease leading Bade Ghulam Ali Khan to famously tell Pandit Jasraj, “Kambakht kabhi besuri nahin gaati.” Measuring her success, talent, awards and accomplishments is meaningless now. She is a scale, a yardstick for the Indian recorded music industry and will remain so for many years.