How Lata Mangeshkar was the defining note of India’s musical memory

Perhaps only the unhurried pace of a Sunday can offer the stillness to fathom what has left.

For the generation preceding India’s independence, and the many generations that followed, Lata Mangeshkar was the defining note of India’s musical memory. There are few who become metaphors in their lifetime; she was already one in her 20s.

When talking about Lata, there were times when you felt that greatness was tested for how little it covered. She was an authentic great, by any definition. More significantly, the range of affectionate, melodious and even divine responses she stirred in millions of Indians saw her being called didi (older sister), swar kokila (nightingale), and saraswati putri (daughter of the goddess of learning) – all at the same time.

In a career spanning six decades, 36 languages, and thousands of songs, Lata mirrored the journey of popular music in India, particularly Hindi film music. For someone who started singing professionally at the age of 13, she had to outgrow the shadow of reigning styles and stalwarts to leave her own imprint on the evolving landscape of playback memory.

Just as the new breed of male singers were expected to imitate KL Saigal, female voices were echoing Noor Jehan. Lata’s singing debut in Marathi in Pahili Mangalagaur (1942) and then her move to what was then Bombay in 1945 saw her being moulded by three different mentors: Master Vinayak, Ustad Aman Ali Khan and Ghulam Haider. To her credit, she came into her own to give voice to different genres and a different generation of Indian women on the Hindi screen – a blend of modern aplomb and traditional grace. By the end of the 1940s, she struck the haunting notes of Aayega Aanewala (Mahal, 1949) for the enigmatic Madhubala.

It was, however, in the 1950s that Lata became the musical alter ego of all the leading ladies on the Hindi screen, such as Nargis, Madhubala, Kamini Kaushal and Vyjayanthimala, to name a few. To excel in the demands of playback singing, she improvised, blending her trained voice with innate melodious throw to produce sublime depth.

It was this blend that was could be heard as she sang numbers ranging from the the mischievously chatty Main Kya Karun Ram Mujhe Buddha Mil Gaya (Sangam, 1964), a rare song featuring a wife teasing an already upset husband, to the serene and melodious Jyoti Kalash Chhalke (Bhabhi ki Choodiyan, 1961). It was also a phase when she was known for the musical bond of memorable duets with legendary male singers like Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar.

Despite her overwhelming presence in film music, one must not lose sight of her impressive repertoire in non-film genres like folk, bhajans and patriotic songs. The most lingering one in national memory is her rendition of Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon in 1963 at the National Stadium in New Delhi in the presence of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and president S Radhakrishnan. Penned by Pradeep and put to music by C Ramchandra, Lata’s voice reverberated as a national catharsis – the tribute of a war-battered country in recalling the courage of its ill-provided forces in the 1962 war with China.

An underrated aspect of her melodious appeal and longevity is the high number of solo numbers she sang – around 3,842 as opposed to 1,919 duets or songs with multiple singers. Besides being prolific, her remarkably long innings at the top of her vocal prowess saw her singing for three generations of female stars. For example, she sang for Kajol, Kajol’s mother Tanuja, aunt Nutan, and grandmother Shobhana Samarth, and this is just one of her intergenerational feats.

Lata’s longevity in tinseltown brought its own share of small controversies, such as the gossip of her rivalry with the budding Suman Kalyanpur or how music composers like OP Nayyar did not make her part of their albums. It’s a measure of how people saw in her an unmistakable bond with the craft that such stories never got currency beyond petty quibbling.

One reason why Lata outlived her contemporaries in popular charts was rooted in how she could mould her sublime and disciplined voice to suit the musical mores of an industry that wasn’t always tuned to melody. Moving away from the 1950s and ‘60s, when it was easy to say “you name it, Lata has sung it”, she continued to be a top draw in the ‘70s and ‘80s too. Earlier, say in the ‘50s, she was prolific to the degree of almost recording one song a day. In later decades, she sang fewer songs but you would still find her name in the yearly top chart numbers. Composers like Naushad, Shankar-Jaikishan and SD Burman were being replaced by a new breed of music composers, like RD Burman and Laxmikant-Pyarelal, but Lata remained the first choice for most songs.

The last decade of the 20th century saw Lata humming chartbusters for even younger composers like Jatin-Lalit and Ramlaxman. It was also time when her imprint on the new generation of female playback voices, like Alka Yagnik and Kavita Krishnamoorti, became evident. Moreover, as television channels became replete with musical reality shows, it became increasingly clear why singing Lata numbers was such a tough act. In many ways, her rendition of a song was a creation beyond mere voice, something that wasn’t subject to recreation.

As if hesitant to hear how a lyrical reflection and personal mood would sound, India found an answer in Lata Mangeshkar for decades. She gave voice to the musical conversations that Indians had with themselves, and found a popular yet sublime way of expressing it. At the same time, she slipped from the personal to creep into the national psyche with her poignant rendition of India’s most haunting war song. That’s a legacy that made her voice reverberate through the formative republic of Nehruvian era, as much as it moves the nationalistic impulse of the Modi years.

In such a spread, millions of Indians found in her the voice that should be humming their lyrical tales of pain, joy, love and even mischief.