The Nightingale of India Is Gone: The Significance of Lata Mangeshkar

On February 6, 2022 Lata Mangeshkar, one of India’s most famous playback singers – and probably the most famous female singer in the country –  passed away. Aged 92, Mangeshkar, often called the Nightingale of India, represented a whole epoch in the history of her country: she was born under British colonial rule and met both the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as the current one, Narendra Modi.

Not being an expert on Indian music – a fact which I need to admit straightaway – I will not attempt to outline the significance of Lata Mangeshkar in terms of her art. What this text will focus on, instead, is a more general approach: referring to the singer’s story to point out four general aspects of India and Indian culture, which her life confirmed.

The first point is the predominance of film music in the music industry as such. In Europe or the U.S., when thinking of a popular singer, we imagine a person who sells a lot of albums and attracts crowds to their concerts. The first is not so obvious in India. Stand-alone music albums do sell in the country, but some of the most popular singers have long based their careers on recording for films.

And so it was with Lata Mangeshkar: The term “playback” singer may seem to reduce her stature, but this is not so in the Indian reality. She recorded movie songs for most of her life, and this is what she was mostly recognized for. But it doesn't take anything away from her reputation as an artist. The very first time Mangeshkar performed a movie song was as early as 1942, five years before India’s independence. Western audiences may remember her voice from Bollywood films such as 2001’s “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham” ( she performed parts of the title song), one of the more popular Indian movies outside the country.

Second, traditional music is important as a source of inspiration for Indian film music. Indian movie soundtracks and the fashion that comes with them bear the footprints of Western pop culture, but composers do not forget their roots as well. Mangeshkar’s style and career is one of the primary examples of this. One of those traditional Indian genres is Hindustani (a term which literally means “Indian” or “north Indian,” but it refers to a particular genre). Lata Mangeshkar’s father, Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar, was a singer educated in Hindustani, and while his death occurred very early in her life, she received her earliest musical teachings from him, and from other traditional Indian masters later. This background was very much audible in her singing.

Third point is the importance of patriotism. Despite all the above references to cinema, one of Mangeshkar’s best-known performances was a song written not for a movie, but intended as a form of obeisance to the Indian soldiers who died in the 1962 war with China (the song was first performed in early 1963, just after the conflict). Titled “Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo” (“O, the People of My Country”) it immediately gained immense popularity, further brightening the already shining stardom of Lata Mangeshkar. If an Indian were asked to name Mangeshkar’s best-known songs from memory, many would certainly name this title.

Similarly, many Indian movies are rich with patriotic accents, and this often affects their popularity – as well as leads to many of them enjoying entertainment tax waivers from the government for tapping into such a theme. While I do not claim that Mangeshkar’s fame was achieved only because of this, or that she mostly recorded for patriotic movies – both of these statements are false – it is still true that she did sing in some of the better-known films of this genre, such as the already mentioned “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.”

The fourth and final point is the ability of the Indian music and film industries to rise above political divides. This would probably be the most debatable of my four points. Obviously, movies and their creators are often judged on how they refer to political issues, or how they avoid the same; this is as true for India as for other countries. Similarly, stars, including actors and musicians, are closely watched in terms of whom they declare their support to, what worldview they share, and with whom they keep company. Just like their Western counterparts, Indian artists cannot escape the game of placing every person in a point on the spectrum of political views.

And yet, I would stress, the largest Indian movie actors and musicians usually – even if with notable exceptions – retain their unchallenged popularity even when their political preferences become more or less clear (or even when it becomes abundantly clear that they are doing their best not to share them).

Lata Mangeshkar was a good example of this phenomenon. She and her family had been close to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a politician who played a pivotal role in outlining the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Savarkar, as a political thinker, had been as influential as he had been controversial, but as a party leader he remained marginal. And yet, Mangeshkar did not hide her closeness to him or her admiration of him. This stance was much more problematic in the 1950-1960s, when she achieved the pinnacle of her artistic career, and when Savarkar lived – and when he remained a staunch critic of the then-ruling party, the Socialist-dominated Indian National Congress. Savarkar’s nationalist ideas are more politically popular nowadays, with the tilting of the Indian political mainstream to the Hindu Right. Similarly, in 2013 Mangeshkar reportedly declared that she prayed for Narendra Modi to become the prime minister of India, which occurred a year later. Even then, however, she remained one of the undisputed stars of modern Indian music.