How Asha Bhosle became, officially, a Guinness World Record holder
Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle sang their first Marathi songs at the age of 13 and 10 respectively. While Lata’s playback career spans to about 68 years (1942-2010), on the other hand, Asha Bhosle has recently recorded a duet “Tere Ishq mein” with Kunal Ganjawala for the film 30 Minutes which released on 9 Dec and the release of this film marked 73 years in Asha’s singing career. Even if Lata is given credit for singing in the latest album Women’s Day Special (2014), still her singing span will only be 72 years, a year less than that of Asha’s. Hence, with the release of 30 Minutes, Asha Bhosle will now be entitled to file a claim with Guinness Book of World Records that she has been singing songs for the last 73 years which happens to be the longest span for any singer in the world. This will be her second World Record because Guinness Book has already credited her for the most recorded singer in the world, having sung more than 11,000 songs. However, it is a fact that this Guinness Record which she got was denied to her for decades. Now, how she got this world record is a very interesting story and I am tempted to narrate it here.
Lata Mangeshkar’s name had first figured in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1974 for having sung the maximum number of songs in the world. She was credited with singing about 25,000 songs. Rafi sahab challenged the claim in 1977 in a letter to the Guinness Book of World Records. In 1984, four years after Rafi’s death (on 31 July 1980), Guinness World Records declared that Mangeshkar had the “most recordings” but it also stated: “Mohammad Rafi claimed to have recorded 28,000 songs in 11 Indian languages between 1944 and April 1980.” In the 1987 edi- tion of the Guinness Book of World Records, the number of songs sung by Mangeshkar increased to 30,000, perhaps to surpass Rafi’s claim of 28,000 songs sung. Rafi’s name was also mentioned till 1990 in the Guinness Book of World Records along with Lata’s. But both the claims of Lata and Rafi were based on newspaper articles, not on verifiable facts or any detailed list of songs furnished to Guinness. An event in 1991 changed both the claims of Lata and Rafi for good.
By 1986, Harmandir Singh Hamraaz of Kanpur, a researcher of film songs, had published the first four volumes of an encyclopaedia of film songs covering the period 1931-1970. Hamraaz’s fifth volume, covering the period between 1971 and 1980 was released in Mumbai in 1991. Based on the information in this mammoth encyclopaedia, the media started printing articles about the actual number of songs that Lata had sung. It was found that Lata had sung only 4,500 Hindi film songs till 1980 and about 5,250 till 1991. Even if one added her non-film and non-Hindi songs, the total would not have exceeded 6,000 songs till 1991. Thus her claim of 25,000 songs with Guinness Book way back in 1974 turned out to be a grossly overstated one. Guinness World Records took note of the news articles and asked Lata in 1991 to prove her claim of having sung more than 30,000 songs. Lata could not give any documentary proof. She could not point out any song sung by her which had been negated in the five-volume encyclopaedia of Hamraaz either. Consequently, the names of both Lata and Rafi were discontinued from the Guinness Book of World Records from 1991 onwards and remained discontinued till 2010.
Asha Bhosle was always convinced that she had sung more songs than anybody else ever had but had remained silent. When Lata’s name was removed in 1991 from Guinness Book, Asha’s fans urged her to lay a claim and started documenting all her songs. Asha finally did that in 2010 and also furnished a full list of songs which was documented by her fan Vishwas Nerulkar stating that she had sung about 11,000 songs. Based on her claim with verifiable list of songs, the Guinness Book of World Records, in its 2011 edition, listed her name as the most recorded artist in music history, “for recording up to 11,000 solo, duet and chorusbacked songs and in over 20 Indian languages since 1947”. Now, after 30 Minutes , Asha can claim another world record with Guinness, that of a singer who has been continuously singing film songs for the last 73 years, which is more than anybody else ever has in the world.