Her voice is her legacy
Lata Mangeshkar gave Bollywood music its identity. Her contribution is unparalleled
Few people’s passing qualifies for the overused phrase, “the end of an era”. No one would dispute, however, that Lata Mangeshkar, who died at 92 in Mumbai on February 6, was one such personality. She was a singer par excellence, a game-changer and an influencer.
The singular responsibility of any artiste is to bring joy. Mangeshkar did that for more than seven decades. A career that started when she was in her teens in the 1940s continued right until 2009 when she lent her voice to a movie starring new-age actors Mugdha Godse and Neil Nitin Mukesh (the grandson of Mangeshkar’s contemporary Mukesh Chand Mathur). It is futile to talk about the awards she won for her art — Bharat Ratna, Dadasaheb Phalke and the French Legion of Honour to name just three of the biggest — because Mangeshkar’s oeuvre and its sheer impact was felt across generations, and it is quite evident that it will continue to hold sway over future singing stars. Her legacy is not her awards, it is her voice. Before Mangeshkar’s voice was mainstreamed by a series of leading composers of the 1940s, film music was often the domain of pureplay classical singers. Film music was never “Bollywood”. Mangeshkar, though trained in Hindustani classical music, was possibly the first in a series of singers that gave Bollywood music a distinct identity. Khemchand Prakash, the composer who gave the world the beautiful “Aayega aanewala” from Mahal in 1949, would also later mentor Kishore Kumar. Mangeshkar made the song her own, and said that it was the most challenging one she ever attempted. She was just 20 then, and was next in line after Noor Jehan for singing superstardom.
Since Mahal, when music recording was just about taking off, to the remarkably high-tech studios of the 21st century, Mangeshkar seemed to be at ease in both worlds. It was as if she was born in one world and raised in another. However, like most towering institutions, she had her quirks as well. Her intense opposition to the Peddar Road flyover in Mumbai for close to two decades saw her lose some support in the same city that built her reputation. But that was a rare discordant note in a life that was otherwise noncontroversial — and defined more by her voice than anything else. Will that be her legacy, though? Unlikely. As her song in the 1977 Gulzar-directed movie Kinara goes, “Meri awaaz hi pehchan hai (My voice is indeed my identity)”.