HAPPY BIRTHDAY to The Melody Queen Lata Mangeshkar (A Libra, born 28 September 1929) is an Indian singer, and occasional music-composer. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in India. Mangeshkars career started in 1942 and has spanned over seven decades. She has recorded songs for over a thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathiand Hindi. She is the elder sister of singers Asha Bhosle, Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Usha Mangeshkar and Meena Mangeshkar. She is the second vocalist to have ever been awarded the Bharat Ratna, Indias highest civilian honour. Mangeshkar was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1974 to 1991 for having made the most recordings in the world. The claim was that she had recorded approximately 25,000 solo, duet, and chorus-backed songs in 20 Indian languages between 1948 to 1974. The category was removed in 1991 and re-introduced in 2011. In 2011 Guinness officially acknowledged Mangeshkars sister Asha Bhosle as the most recorded artist in music history. Lata Mangeshkar was born in a Marathi-speaking Gomantak Maratha family, in the princely state of Sangli, part of the Maharashtra. Her father, Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar was a classical singer and theater actor. Her mother Shevanti (Shudhamati) who was from Thalner, Maharashtra, was Deenanaths second wife. The familys last name used to be Hardikar; Deenanath changed it to Mangeshkar in order to identify his family with his native town, Mangeshi in Goa. Lata was named Hema at her birth. Her parents later renamed her Lata after a female character, Latika, in one of her fathers plays,BhaawBandhan.Lata is the eldest child of her parents. Meena, Asha, Usha and Hridaynath are her siblings in sequence. Mangeshkar took her first lessons from her father. At the age of five, she started to work as an actress in her fathers musical plays (Sangeet Natak in Marathi). On the first day in the school, she started teaching songs to other children. When the teacher stopped her, she was so angry that she stopped going to the school. Other sources cite that she left school because they would not allow her to bring Asha with her, as she would often bring her younger sister with her. In 1942, when Mangeshkar was 13, her father died of heart disease. Master Vinayak (Vinayak Damodar Karnataki), the owner of Navyug Chitrapat movie company and a close friend of the Mangeshkar family, took care of them. He helped Lata get started in a career as a singer and actress. Mangeshkar sang the song Naachu Yaa Gade, Khelu Saari Mani Haus Bhaari which was composed by Sadashivrao Nevrekar for Vasant Joglekars Marathi movie Kiti Hasaal (1942), but the song was dropped from the final cut. Vinayak gave her a small role in Navyug Chitrapats Marathi movie Pahili Mangalaa-gaur (1942), in which she sang Natali Chaitraachi Navalaai . Mangeshkar moved to Mumbai in 1945 when Master Vinayaks company moved its headquarters there. She started taking lessons in Hindustani classical music from Ustad Amanat Ali Khan .. Mangeshkar and her sister Asha played minor roles in Vinayaks first Hindi-language movie, Badi Maa (1945). In that movie, Lata also sang a bhajan, “Maata Tere Charnon Mein.” She was introduced to music director Vasant Desai during the recording of Vinayaks second Hindi-language movie, Subhadra(1946). Following the partition of India in 1947, Ustad Amanat Ali Khan migrated to newly formed Pakistan, so Mangeshkar started to learn classical music under Amanat Khan Devaswale. Pandit Tulsidas Sharma, a pupil of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, also trained her. After Vinayaks death in 1948, music director Ghulam Haider mentored her as a singer. Haider introduced Mangeshkar to producer Sashadhar Mukherjee, who was working then on the movie Shaheed (1948), but Mukherjee dismissed Mangeshkars voice as too thin. An annoyed Haider responded that in the coming years the producers and the directors would fall at Latas feet and beg her to sing in their movies. Haider gave Lata her first major break with the song “Dil Mera Toda,” from the movie Majboor (1948). Initially, Mangeshkar is said to have imitated the acclaimed singer Noor Jehan, but later she developed her own style of singing. Actor Dilip Kumar once made a mildly disapproving remark about Mangeshkars Maharashtrian accent while singing Hindi/Urdu songs; so for a period of time, Lata took lessons in Urdu from an Urdu teacher named Shafi. S. D. Burman chose Mangeshkar as the leading female singer for his musical scores in Sazaa ). However a rift developed between Lata and Burman in 1957, and Lata did not sing Burmans compositions again until 1962.In 1963, Mangeshkar returned to collaboration with S. D. Burman. For a brief period during the 1960s, she was not on good terms with Mohammed Rafi over the issue of royalty payments to singers. Mangeshkar wanted Rafi to back her in demanding a half-share from the five percent song royalty that the films producer conceded to select composers.But Rafi took a diametrically opposite view, and believed that a playback singers claim on the filmmaker ended with the payment of the agreed fee for the song. This led to tensions between the two. After an argument during the recording of the song Tasveer Teri Dil Mein (Maya, 1961), the two refused to sing with each other.The music director Jaikishan later negotiated a reconciliation between the two. In 1978, Raj Kapoor direct Satyam Shivam Sundaram Lata Mangeshkar lends her voice to the main theme song Satyam Shivam Sundaram, which was among the chart-toppers of the year. The story of was inspired by Lata Mangeshkar reveals Raj Kapoors daughter Ritu Nanda in her latest book. I visualised the story of a man falling for a woman with an ordinary countenance but a golden voice and wanted to cast Lata Mangeshkar in the role. The book quotes Raj Kapoor as saying. In 1999, Lata Eau de Parfum, a perfume brand named after her, was launched. In 2005, she designed a jewellery collection called Swaranjali, which was crafted by Adora, an Indian diamond export company. On 28 November 2012, Lata Mangeshkar launched her own music label LM Music with an album of bhajans. She sang along with younger sister Usha on the album.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 01:05:45 +0000
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