<p>If music is the perfect art and all other arts aspire to its level, all popular music in India aspired to the level of Lata Mangeshkar. She was the best known, loved and respected musician in the country for seven decades, and she sang for many generations. Covid has taken musicians away, including the legendary SPB, and she too has joined the silence beyond. Adjectives and superlatives always failed to describe her because she ruled a world where words took wings and lost themselves in melodies. Virtuosity and technique are one thing, the ability to reach out to the hearts of people over generations and stay there is another. That is why Lata Mangeshkar does not pass, and descriptions like the end of an era fail about her. </p>.<p>If there was one voice that represented India in all its moods and states and in its contradictions through decades and still remained essentially the same, that was Lata Mangeshkar’s. An entire range of human emotions, including love, longing, regret, sorrow, pangs of separation, belonging and the loss of it, pride, patriotism and many others without a name came alive in her songs, and she sang in almost every tongue India has. That is why she came to be the national voice expressing itself in many languages. She created a universe of enchanting sound from her first Hindi song Mata ek saput ki dunia in 1943 to the last one Jeena kya hai jaana maine in 2021. There was the perfect combination of tradition and individual genius, which acted on each other in her art. She inherited a classical idiom but moulded it with her deep musical sense to suit a context, a sentiment or an age. That gave uniqueness and universality to her songs. She was an uncompromising professional and a moniker of excellence who would not forgive herself a wrong note and would tame the most rebellious and difficult words into melody. </p>.<p>Her voice ran through independent India’s society and evolved to represent and shape many of the ideas that drive it and institutions that define it, like women’s aspirations, the individual’s struggle to find identity and success in an oppressive milieu, the confidence of political nationhood and cultural assertion, and the shaping of a popular world that is half fantasy, half real, by the name Bollywood. A lot of what made the soft power of India abroad was made of her voice. Its elemental purity and simplicity made for its appeal and charisma, and it could make Prime Ministers weep and the common man rejoice. She filled the cracks and voids in our mortal lives and, remarkably, age could not wither her nor stale her variety. That accounts for her immortality.</p>
<p>If music is the perfect art and all other arts aspire to its level, all popular music in India aspired to the level of Lata Mangeshkar. She was the best known, loved and respected musician in the country for seven decades, and she sang for many generations. Covid has taken musicians away, including the legendary SPB, and she too has joined the silence beyond. Adjectives and superlatives always failed to describe her because she ruled a world where words took wings and lost themselves in melodies. Virtuosity and technique are one thing, the ability to reach out to the hearts of people over generations and stay there is another. That is why Lata Mangeshkar does not pass, and descriptions like the end of an era fail about her. </p>.<p>If there was one voice that represented India in all its moods and states and in its contradictions through decades and still remained essentially the same, that was Lata Mangeshkar’s. An entire range of human emotions, including love, longing, regret, sorrow, pangs of separation, belonging and the loss of it, pride, patriotism and many others without a name came alive in her songs, and she sang in almost every tongue India has. That is why she came to be the national voice expressing itself in many languages. She created a universe of enchanting sound from her first Hindi song Mata ek saput ki dunia in 1943 to the last one Jeena kya hai jaana maine in 2021. There was the perfect combination of tradition and individual genius, which acted on each other in her art. She inherited a classical idiom but moulded it with her deep musical sense to suit a context, a sentiment or an age. That gave uniqueness and universality to her songs. She was an uncompromising professional and a moniker of excellence who would not forgive herself a wrong note and would tame the most rebellious and difficult words into melody. </p>.<p>Her voice ran through independent India’s society and evolved to represent and shape many of the ideas that drive it and institutions that define it, like women’s aspirations, the individual’s struggle to find identity and success in an oppressive milieu, the confidence of political nationhood and cultural assertion, and the shaping of a popular world that is half fantasy, half real, by the name Bollywood. A lot of what made the soft power of India abroad was made of her voice. Its elemental purity and simplicity made for its appeal and charisma, and it could make Prime Ministers weep and the common man rejoice. She filled the cracks and voids in our mortal lives and, remarkably, age could not wither her nor stale her variety. That accounts for her immortality.</p>
