The late Indian star sang of love in all its glorious and terrible forms – but also rooted listeners in history and spirituality
Sitting in the back of my parents’ Peugeot 504 as a child, we listened to songs by the likes of Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi and, of course, Lata Mangeshkar. We were too young to understand what they were about – love, loss, and romance – but we knew all the lyrics.
Well, not quite all of them. During her 92 years, Mangeshkar recorded 50,000 songs in 18 languages, breaking records as the most recorded artist in human history. As a playback singer for Bollywood films, she was never seen on screen, but her voice, dubbed in place of the actors’, was unmistakable. She got her start in 1942, and for a woman to have a career this long and distinguished in India, Mangeshkar must have been steely beneath those silk saris – her voice, though, remained gentle, and she was known as “the nightingale”.
