She was nicknamed “the nightingale of India”. Indian superstar Lata Mangeshkar, who reigned supreme over Bollywood music for decades, has died at the age of 92, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Sunday February 6.
“I am overwhelmed beyond words. The kind and caring Lata Didi has left us. She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled.”, wrote Narendra Modi on Twitter.
Born on September 28, 1929 in Indore, in the state of Madhya Pradesh (center), Lata Mangeshkar recorded her first song in 1947 for the film majboor. Dil mera toda, one of the songs of the film, had propelled her, at 18, into the spotlight.
From then on, Bollywood blockbusters had snatched his incomparable voice throughout the following decades, marking many cinematographic works such as Barsaat or mahal.
Multitude of albums
She had lent her voice to a host of actresses, sometimes 50 years her junior. So much so that some critics complained that its ubiquity overshadowed young rising stars.
But she retained a following of fanatics who placed each of her titles at the top of the charts.
Always wearing a long brown braid, red dot on her forehead, she sang in more than 1,000 films and published a multitude of albums. She had some 27,000 songs in her repertoire, performed in dozens of languages, including English, Russian, Dutch and Swahili.