By Dr Amjad Parvez

Daily Times August 14, 2014

It was a big movie with Vyjantimala, Raj Kapoor and Rajender Kumar; a love triangle wherein Rajinder Kumar sacrifices his love for his friend Raj Kapoor. Its songs were good but the best one was Lata-Mukesh’s “O! Merey Sanam”. The year 1965 was another good start for SJ as one of my most favourite songs “Bedardi balma tujh ko mera mun yaad karta hai” picturised on cute Sadhna was composed for the movie ‘Arzoo’. It had a haunting melody. I especially liked its filming in wilderness. I also must mention Lata Mangeshkar’s memorable songs with SJ for the movie ‘Raat Aur Din’ in 1967. This was one of the last of black and white cinemascope movies and I love all its songs such as “Awara aye mere dil”, “Dil ki girah khol do” and ‘Na Chairo Kal Ke Afsane’ by Lata Mangeshkar and ‘Raat Aur Din Diya Jaley’ both by Lata and Mukesh. There are so many other songs with Lata-Shankar Jaikishen combination with whom we have a musical past; the places we were then, the friends we were with and the memories attached therein but I do not desire to further elongate this submission. Before venturing into Lata’s work with other composers, I must dwell into some more information about her life and music.

Lata’s life and music: Today Lata is 85 years old. She has sung for over five decades for actresses starting from heroines Madhubala, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman, Nutun, Sadhna and alike of past generation to Preity Zinta of present generation. She has sung melodious numbers including ghazals and religious songs in many albums and in many languages. In this submission we are encompassing her talent only for Bollywood made movies. Until the 1991 edition, when her entry disappeared, the Guinness Book of World Records listed her as the most-recorded artist in the world with not less than thirty thousand solos, duets and chorus-backed songs in twenty Indian languages between 1948 and 1987. Today that number must have increased. Her father Dinanath Mangeshkar initially tutored her in music. As reiterated above, Lata was taught by a number of other of accomplished musicians also. She was still a child oblivious to the machinations of the movie world and still unsure as to what her real mission in life was. She did not know then whether she could be a better singer or an actress. Indeed, as the tradition was at the time Initially Lata did act and sing for movies but failed. Lata acted her last movie role in the early 1950s. As elaborated above, in 1942, Master Vinayak started his last Navyug Chitrapat movie ‘Pahili Managalagaur’ and ensured a little part for the thirteen year old Lata. This, from all records, is Lata’s first stint with movies. Dada Chandekar created the music, but to the best of anyone’s knowledge, there was no Lata in any of the songs. Q Leo Rahman states in his mini biography of Lata Mangeshkar that she also studied music with renowned singers, Aman Ali Khan Saheb and Amanat Khan. Even at a young age she displayed a God-given musical gift and could master vocal exercises the first time. Ironically, for someone of her stature, she made her entry into Bollywood at the wrong time which was around the 1940s, when strong voices like Nurjehan and Shamshad Begum were established and popular. She was rejected from many projects because it was believed that her voice was too high-pitched and thin. The circumstances of her entry into the industry were no less inauspicious as her father died in 1942 and the responsibility of earning income to support her family fell upon her. After the success of the movies ‘Dulari’ and ‘Andaz’ both released in 1949, her unusually high-pitched singing became trendy and within a year, she had changed the face of playback singing forever. The only two lower-pitched singers to survive at Lata’s entry were Geeta Dutt (Roy then) and Shamshad Begum as Noor Jehan had opted for newly created Pakistan. Her singing style was initially reminiscent of Noor Jehan but she soon overcame that pattern of singing and evolved her own distinctive style. Her sister, Asha Bhosle, too, came up in the late 1950s and the two of them were the queens of Indian playback singing right through to the 1990s. Her voice had a special versatile quality, which meant that finally music composers could stretch their creative experiments to the fullest. In my humble opinion Lata’s maturity and clarity of voice emerged in her songs or 1970s films. Prior to that era her voice was shrill (sometimes) and girlish (as she was then) but was very tuneful. In 1980s and 1980s her voice her voice developed a tinge of sourness but the tunefulness persisted. She is lucky to get the best of tunes of all the music composers of India all her life time.