Two Lata Mangeshkar songs, 60 years apart, which show her range and dedication: ‘She stood for 8 hours, practised for 4 days’
When Lata Mangeshkar passed away in February, millions around the globe called it the ‘end of an era’. Known as the ‘Nightingale of India’, Lata was the voice behind many generations of film actors, yet every song she was given, she dedicated herself to it in the way a newcomer would. Lata’s first big hit was the 1949 film Mahal’s ‘Aayega Aanewala’ and until the aughts, her dedication towards her craft was just the same.
Lata was all of 19 when she sang Mahal’s Aayega Aanewala and the song set the mood for the film. The recording of the song needed to have a haunting effect but back in the 1940s, the technology wasn’t so developed that they could manipulate a singer’s voice at will, so Lata came up with a plan. She shared with Nasreen Munni Kabir in the book Lata Mangeshkar: In Her Own Voice, “We decided to make the song sound as though it were coming from a great dance, to create an effect like that. I stood in a corner of the studio and the microphone was placed in the middle of the room. Singing the first verse, I walked slowly towards the mic, and when I was close to it, I sang the main refrain. We repeated this process many times and finally the song was recorded.”
This practice was unheard of at the time and the film’s director Kamal Amrohi and music director Khemchand Prakash were in awe of her. “It was an amazing experience. We spent the whole day in the recording studio working on ‘Aayega Aanewala’. Mahal’s director, Kamal Amrohi Sahib, clearly understood how, through the song, he could make the scene full of mood and atmosphere,” she recalled.
The same dedication that Lata displayed back in the 1940s was evident through the 2000s as well. Almost six decades later, when Lata was a globally renowned singer, she had the same passion for music. And this is evident from an anecdote that was once shared film director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. Lata Mangeshkar had gotten very selective about her songs in her old age but she agreed to sing for Mehra’s 2006 film Rang De Basanti where the music was composed AR Rahman.
Mehra shared that while singing ‘Luka Chhupi’, Lata was on her feet for over 8 hours. At the time, she was in her late 70s. Recalling this incident at the film’s tenth-anniversary celebrations, Mehra shared at a press conference, “Every day she would come to the studio and start rehearsing the song. I would like this to sink in that Lata Mangeshkar would come to the studio every day and rehearse the song. For 4 days she rehearsed.” Meha was in awe of the singer who was so widely renowned yet insed on rehearsing so much. On the day of the recording, he recalled, “She stood at the mic, we were in the room. She stood there, her plait touching the floor. We kept some flowers, a bottle of water and a chair for her. For 8 hours, she sang the song and for 8 hours she stood there.”
Veteran lyric writer Gulzar, who wrote ‘Naam Gum Jayega’, the song that became Lata’s identity, spoke about her after her demise and shared how Lata identified with the words of this song. He told PTI, “We had written the song for a film. I remember I had told her when you give an autograph you can use this (the lines of the song) ‘Meri awaaz hi pehchan hai’. I didn’t mean it thinking (it will become her identity) but it became her identity and she identified (with it).”
Lata Mangeshkar passed away in February 2021 in Mumbai at the age 92.
