Today is 95th anniversary of the birth of Lata Mangeshkar, known to millions as the ‘Nightingale of India’ and a regular fixture of India’s airwaves for decades.
Born in 1929 in Indore, central India, Lata Mangeshkar started her musical training under the tutelage of her father Deenanath, singing in his theatrical productions when she was just five years old.
Her father’s death when she was 13 forced her to take on the role of breadwinner for four younger siblings, and the family eventually moved to Mumbai in 1945.
She pursued a career as a playback singer, recording tracks to be mimed by actors, and her voice soon became a staple of Bollywood blockbusters.
Her rendition of ‘Oh the People of My Country’ reportedly moved the then-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to tears.
In the following decades, composers and film producers vied to sign the prolific of Lata for their movies.
She had a wide range, and one could think of more complicated melodies than with the earlier untrained singers.
Mangeshkar dominated Bollywood music for more than half a century, and is considered by many to be the Indian film industry’s greatest-ever playback singer.
She was also known for her quirks, such as never singing with her shoes on and always writing out each song by hand before recording it.
Alhough she dropped out of school, saying she only ever took classes for one day, she was fluent in several languages.
Her oeuvre included devotional and classical albums and spanned around 27,000 songs in dozens of languages, including Bangala, Hindi, English, Russian, Dutch and Swahili.
In 2001, Lata was awarded India’s highest civilian honour the Bharat Ratna, and she received France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to Indian music and cinema.
Lata Mangeshkar passed away on February 6 in 2022.