Legendary Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar, or ‘the nightingale of India’ as she is lovingly called by her admirers, has a lot of devoted fans, celebrities who shower appreciation on her, and deservedly so.
However, Lata Mangeshkar has rarely talked about her voice or her influences. But there have been some occasions where she has made an exception and given candid about how and why she sings the way she does.
Talking to writer and filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir about their book In Her Voice, the playback singer recounted a tale of one of the earliest days of her beginnings into the profession, which displayed her passion and confidence. Talking about her singing in the film Badi Maa, Lata Mangeshkar said she was once asked to sing a song in front of Noor Jehan.
“One day, I was on the Badi Maa set and Master Vinayak introduced us by saying, ‘This is Noor Jehanji. Sing her a song.’ So I sang Raag Jaijaiwanti. She then asked me to sing a film song, so I sang R.C. Boral’s ‘Jeevan hai bekaar bina tumhaare’ from the film Wapas. While I was singing I remembered Baba’s words: ‘If you sing in front of your guru, consider yourself a guru.’ So I sang with that thought in mind and she liked my voice. She told me to practice and said I will be a very good singer someday,” Lata Mangeshkar is quoted as saying in the book.
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A lot of people believe that Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkar is naturally gifted and probably does not have to work on her voice as much as other people. However, that is not true. During an interview, Lata Mangeshkar had revealed that she trains on her voice as much as the next person, but doesn’t inevitably like to ‘restrict’ herself when it comes to food.
“Natural talent is 75 percent, and the rest of it is hard work and training. People also say you have to take care of what you eat. They say don’t eat chili, don’t consume pickles, or don’t have curd. But I don’t restrict myself. I have everything. My father used to say, ‘You don’t need to put boundaries around yourself to be a singer, if you continue singing, your voice will be fine.’ This means you should keep singing so that you are always in practice. That’s all I have done my whole life, just sing,” Lata Mangeshkar said.
Lata Mangeshkar’s influences:
During an interview with lyricist Javed Akhtar, Lata Mangeshkar said that her voice and singing can arouse certain emotions in the audience because of a lesson taught to her by Master Ghulam Haider.
“Master Ghulam Haider used to tell me, ‘Lata, gaane ke bol jo hai usko samjho. Uske liye tumko thodi Hindi aur Urdu aani chahiye. Imagine karo ki jo heroine wo dukh ya khushi mehsoos kar rahi hai, wo nahi kar rahi, tum kar rahi ho uske jagah. Tumhe wo dukh hua hai, yaa tumko wo khushi mili hai (Lata, focus on the lyrics and what it is trying to say. Learn a bit of Urdu and Hindi to enunciate better. Have the vision to imagine yourself as the heroine who is experiencing the joy and pain in that moment)’.”
Lata Mangeshkar said she was also taught by ‘Anil da’ (Anil Biswas) where to leave a gap in singing and where to take a breath so that it all seemed seamless in the end. “Anil da se maine bohot kuch seekha, jaise gaane me saans kaha chorni chahiye aur kaha leni chahiye. Main mic ke saamne tak hoti thi toh logon ko pata bhi nahi chalta tha maine kaha saans li aur kaha chori (Anil da taught me a lot. He taught me where to take a breath while singing and where not to. The whole process had become so seamless that people couldn’t tell how I was doing it even if I happened to be doing it on a mic right in front of them).”