Lata Mangeshkar’s Voice in the Age of Cassette Reproduction

The Inaudible Voice of the Dubbing Artist

Imitation of voice and singing style has been a subject of considerable discussion around Hindi film songs since the 1940s. For instance, journalists writing in popular film magazines have often referred to Noor Jehan’s influence on Lata Mangeshkar in the early years of her career. ⁵ Later, Lata’s soft intimate style combined with a higher pitch was referred to as her own distinctive voice, and this became a template for the heroines’ songs. As Raghunath Seth noted, “now a woman singer who doesn’t have a voice of a pitch similar to Lata’s is just not acceptable as a popular singer” (Seth, 1980, p. 55). It has been acknowledged that most of the new generation of singers who entered the industry in the 1960s and 1970s modulated their style of singing to resemble Mangeshkar’s voice heard over radio. For instance, Sulakshana Pandit, who was trained in classical music, admitted in an interview that it was only after she heard Lata Mangeshkar on the radio that she realized her own voice was “inclined to sing soft, melodious numbers” (Hardikar, 1980).

In a similar vein, Sadhana Sargam worked under the tutelage of Kalyanji Anandji for several years, to become a playback singer. This required her to self-consciously tone down the effect of her training in Hindustani classical music in her vocal performance. ⁶ As she notes:

See, when we sing classical music we sing at a lower scale…because we have to sing for a long time…usually kali panch or safed saat, but for film I had to sing and practice at a higher scale at least by one or two notes. Then in classical singing, vibrato is not accepted—usko dosh mana jaata hai—but in play back singing I had to develop vibrato (kampan) because that gives the expressions. I used to listen to Lata ji. My range was ok, it was neither too wide nor too limited, but I had to work a bit. ⁷

To get a foothold in the industry, singers like Sadhana Sargam had to work as dubbing artists, their labor unidentified in the production of film songs. Though voice dubbing had been sporadically deployed during the “golden period” of the playback era, it was only in the 1970s when singing stars like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle started traveling extensively for concerts, that it gained wider currency. The dubbing system, designed to perpetuate the hegemony of leading playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, was based on a mimetic mode: the female copy singers were expected to emulate the tonalities best suited to the female voice in popular film songs. Dubbing artists learnt, rehearsed, and recorded film songs closely following the demands of the composers. The availability of the tracking system made it possible to record the voice of the dubbing artist on a separate track. A preliminary version of the song was created through a mixing of this scratch voice with the music tracks and this was used as a referent for on-screen stars to mime the song for its “picturization.” The voice of the dubbing artist was replaced by the voice of the leading playback singer just before the release of the film. The practice of dubbing was marked by sonic erasures and fundamentally changed the relationship between the recorded voice and its dispersal.

Version recordings by copy singers in the 1980s pulled the dubbing system inside out—giving a public face to a practice that formed the underbelly of the music industry. By lending her voice, the dubbing artist facilitated the production of the song in its musical and visual form. The voice of the scratch singer was temporarily inscribed on the tracks, but this sonic material was rendered inaudible in the final version of the song. Like the figure of the extra or the body double, the labor provided by the scratch singer remained invisible, or rather, inaudible. Chronologically and materially the dubbing singer’s voice prefigured the voice of the main singer, destabilizing the notion of the “original.”

The practice of dubbing, I believe, was intrinsically tied up with the art of imitation. To become a dubbing artist, one had to train and sing at the same scale as the Mangeshkar sisters, with matching tonalities. This was imperative because the dubbing artist and the main artist shared the same musical tracks. More importantly, the songs were composed keeping in mind the vocal range of the main artist. ⁸ It is therefore not surprising that singers who started out as dubbing artists claimed to be deeply influenced by Lata Mangeshkar’s singing. Alka Yagnik has acknowledged her debt to Lata’s voice in an interview and said, “I wanted to sing like her. I used to listen to her songs carefully and hum them. That’s when my mother spotted my aptitude for singing” (Filmfare, 2000). It was this quality, to be able to “sing like her” that became a qualifying mark for the new dubbing artists.

It was the dubbing system that made it possible for singers to cross over and become playback singers in their own right. The process of recording allowed voices’ entry into the networks of circulation in the public domain. For instance, Anuradha Paudwal suddenly shot to the limelight as a scratch singer with songs like “Ding dong, O baby sing a song” and “Tu mera janu hai,” she had sung for Hero (Subhash Ghai, 1983). According to Paudwal:

When they [Laxmikant Pyarelal] were recording for Hero, I learnt that they are recording for Lataji and she was not in town and I just felt that day that let me do it. I called Lakshmiji and said, “I would like to sing this song.” But they said, “No this is for a dubbing artist. It will not be retained.” I said, “Doesn’t matter, I would like to sing it.” They gave me the song. It was “Tu Mera Janu hai.” The tracks were good and I worked hard on it and my first take was okayed, although, they were also not spending too much time because for them this was just a scratch voice. But in the evening when they heard the song they said that this is sounding fine so let us retain it. That is how it was retained, it was meant for Lataji. Immediately, after 15 days, they recorded “Ding dong” and that too was retained, though it was a dubbing song. Then I sang “Pyar karne wale kabhi darte nahin,” but that was dubbed by Lataji the next day. ⁹

The huge popularity of Paudwal’s songs from Hero marked the end of her ten-year old “struggle” in the industry. This was a clear indication that her voice had been accepted by the listeners. Working as dubbing artists became an essential part of aspiring singers’ training, allowing them to showcase their skills in a given template. In return, what excited the new entrants was the opportunity to sing with an orchestra, following the rigorous demands of a live studio recording. In industry parlance, this period is referred to as one of struggle and is considered essential to the making of an artist. Kavita Krishnamurthy, who worked as a dubbing artist for several years, reminisces, “Occasionally I’d feel emotional about certain songs. But this was good for me as a singer. Since I had never struggled for anything, I thought it was good to know some pain. I think struggle is essential for an artist” (Playback and Fast Forward, 1987).

Affective Constellation: From the Listening Fan to the Singing Devotee

Moving away from the concepts framed by critical sociology to a pragmatic approach toward taste in music, Antoine Hennion has perceptively pointed toward the rise of the amateur, the spectator, the fan as a new competent figure employing “highly elaborate formats and procedures” to display productive as well as creative capacities (Hennion, 2003, pp. 131–132). In the case of Lata Mangeshkar’s recursive voice, we can see the emergence of a range of listening and fan practices, that spurred by the cassette boom, led to the creation of a range of musical objects. But the journey undertaken by the amateur, aspiring singer was never easy. Singers like Kavita Krishnamurthy were confronted by memories associated with songs that they had sung as scratch artists. These songs were now material objects available in the public domain through another voice. For instance, in an interview Kavita has spoken about her initial reaction when Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the director of 1942, A Love Story, informed her that “Kuch na kaho,” a song that she had sung for the film would now be recorded by Lata Mangeshkar. As she recollects:

I was stunned. First of all I hadn’t recovered from Dada’s [R.D Burman’s] death and then this. It was as if the clock had been turned back to make me a dubbing artist all over again. Still, I consoled myself that it was the divine Lata Mangeshkar who was singing for me. I got over my disappointment. As far as I am concerned I will be eternally grateful to Lataji. I started my career singing her songs which she would dub over later. Unko sab maaf hai. I owe everything to her. (Filmfare, June 1996)

Kavita’s account alerts us to the complexity of the relationship the aspiring singers of the industry shared with Lata. This ambivalent bond was marked both by devotion and anxiety, gesturing toward the intricate ways in which fandom played itself out, in relationship to the star on the one hand and the music industry on the other. The dominant position of the aural star ensured that the boundaries between a dubbing artist and a playback singer remained fluid. These ambiguities suited the music composers who worked in tune with the dynamics of the industry. As demand for musical content increased, the industry required a new brand of trained singers who could quickly and efficiently produce a voice that was well suited to the established patterns of the film song. ¹⁰

In the dubbing system a singer had to imagine the voice of the aural star. In version recordings on the other hand, copy artists as fans relied on listening to the original song to recreate the new version. The use of imitation in both cases was as much about the self as about the other. In these affective constellations, the fan listener relied on aural memories and sensations to keep alive the connection with her role model. Further, the techniques required for the production of voice in version recordings challenged the notion of voice as a locus of subjectivity. For instance, Bela Sulakhe molded her voice by closely following Lata Mangeshkar:

I have the same scale as Lataji. I grew up listening to her and I can say that I am her biggest devotee. It is not possible to sing like her. She is so great an artist but I have tried to listen to her and to follow her technique in the way she sings murkis. I think I am a good listener. Jaise arjun ko sirf machli ki aankh dikhti hai vaise mujhe sirf unka gana sunai deta hai [The way Arjun could see nothing but the eye of the fish, I pay attention to her songs]. My whole body listens to her. ¹¹

Bela’s insights point to a deep investment in the techniques of listening that gets relayed as an active engagement with the sonic field. In an essay that presents the idea of embodied listening, I have drawn attention to the “phenomenological experience of bodies that can ‘hear’ as well as be ‘heard,’ bodies that get immersed in the affective force-field of musicality” (Jhingan, 2011, p. 173). In imitating and replicating Lata’s voice, Bela followed the sonic trace of Lata’s recorded voice. This could be achieved through an excavation of her aural perceptions and memories, reflected in her remark, “my whole body listens to her.”

In their influential philosophical treatise A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987) used the term “assemblage,” to foreground the movement of experiences through connections and affective alliances. Assemblage is “simultaneously and inseparably a machinic assemblage and an assemblage of enunciation” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 504). This formulation has been deployed by many scholars working on music and technology (Hemment, 2004; Rai, 2009). In India, cassette technology brought together an inventory of machines, cultural networks, and human bodies to alter our listening experience, reorienting us toward familiar songs through different voices. In this discursive form, the voice of the copy artist connected with the machinic spills out into new territories. The imitative form of singing in version recordings can be better understood as bodies immersed in a process of “becoming.” Following Deleuze, Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth locate affect in intensities that move from body to body (human, non-human, part-body, and otherwise), in resonances that circulate and “stick to bodies and worlds,” creating new passageways and variations between different intensities (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010, p. 1). Bela’s sensual engagement with Lata Mangeshkar’s voice foregrounds the myriad connections and loops within which music, voices, and bodies are entangled. It was this affective alliance that remained at the core of the copy singer’s investment in the production of an imitative voice. Sharing the same repertoire, having the same scale, singing the same songs—this articulation of the self, its bodily practices, and its aesthetic achievements were all cast in a mimetic mode.

The reproduction of older film songs in version recordings was anchored through the “voice” of the original singer in the market. Audio companies adopted two key strategies to attract buyers: the first was to keep the prices of these musical commodities low; and the second was to highlight the names of the original artist on the jacket covers of these musical commodities. The success of this venture created new demands for cover version artists. The jacket covers of these cassettes and CDs carried photographs of the original singers/stars with the names of version singers mentioned in small print. For instance, the cover of Lata ke Sadabahar Geet: Volume 7 carries a photograph of Lata on the front cover, while Bela Sulakhe’s name appears on the back cover (Images 1a and 1b). As Zaheer Ahmed of T-series remarked, “now-a-days even the company label does not matter. The buyer doesn’t care who the artists are as long as he gets the original names right” (Mukherjee, 1994).

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Images 1a and 1b.

Source: Personal Collection.

The escalation of sales of version recordings led to a scathing attack by critics, who labeled them as low forms that threatened to destabilize the moral and aesthetic categories as fashioned by singers like Lata Mangeshkar. In Subhash K. Jha’s reviews even the listeners were not spared. As he wrote, “having built an inbuilt aversion to version recordings, I have so far desisted from viewing them. I mean if people like to hear Lata’s songs in the voice of Uttara Kelkar, surely it is their funeral” (Jha, 1988a). Another journalist referred to copy artists as “pitiful clones” desperately trying to match the “the original divine singer” (Purushottam, 1998). Despite the moral high ground displayed by the critics, the music directors of the film industry continued to fall back on familiar vocal tonalities. Younger singers could now enter the industry after getting suitable training to become playback singers. For romantic numbers, confessional and sad songs, Lata Mangeshkar’s style was followed; for night club songs or sensuous songs the template was Asha Bhonsle’s vocal style. The industry’s expectations could only be met through an activation of acoustic memory linked to the original singer’s recorded voice.

Music and Memory

In the Bombay music industry, the conjunction of listening and aural memory was as crucial as the ability to sing itself. This memory was refracted not from listening to one’s own voice but from hearing the dominant and mechanical voice of the “other”—the singing star. Mahalakshmi, who began her career by singing advertising jingles, recalls her experience of lending her voice for films in the late 1990s:

I came in at a time when these voices were still around and music directors would invariably say “aap yeh gana Lata ji ko yaad kar ke gaiyye [please think about Lataji when you sing this song].” ¹²

To sing like Lata Mangeshkar meant an active recalling of the memory of her voice. Making connections between memory and voice, Rudolph Lothar writes, “Nothing excites the memory more strongly than the human voice, may be because nothing is forgotten as quickly as a voice. Our memory of it however, does not die—its timbre and character sink into our subconscious where they await their arrival” (Kittler, 1986, pp. 45–46). Memory’s link with consciousness has recently been challenged by Laura Marks (2000). In a detailed discussion of memory and mimesis, Marks revisits Bergson’s understanding of memory, to underscore his idea of habitual memory. Bergson makes a distinction between habitual or impulsive memory which is “immediately and unselectively actualized in the body” and “selective memory that actualizes what is useful” (Marks, 2000, p. 142). Drawing on Michael Taussig’s theory of bodily mimesis, Marks places greater value on embodied memories and sensuous forms of knowledge. Marks’ intervention is useful for understanding the play of memory in the aural field and helps to unravel the relationship between musical memory and sense experience. I would like to cite an anecdote related by Komal Kothari, a well known folklorist from Rajasthan to flesh out the idea of embodied memory. This is about the transmission of folk music from one generation to the other. Kothari expressed his concern at the lack of a structured system of transmission in folk music. I quote the following passage by Kothari (in Rustom Bharucha, 2003, pp. 233–234):

Lakha [a Manganiyar] is an excellent Sarangi player, I tell you. Even Pandit Ram Narayan and Ustad Sultan Khan, they all agree that he is a great player. But is he a teacher? The answer is “no”. Once, we gave him a student—Shamsu, from the Langa community—who was very small at that time. He wouldn’t learn and Lakha had no method of initiating the child into the learning process. He was not ready to go back to his childhood and remember how he had learned the sarangi. As an expert, all he wanted to do was to play his instrument in front of the child, and naturally Shamsu was not able to follow him. Then Lakha would beat him, verbally abuse him, not give him food. For almost one year Shamsu got a scholarship from the Sangeet Natak Akademi and he learned nothing, nor was Lakha able to do anything. …..And yet, there are surprises. After he [Shamsu] failed to learn from Lakha, I was very angry with him. After all, we were responsible for the grant that he received. For almost four years, I did not have any contact with the boy. I didn’t select him for any programme. But once what happened was I needed a sarangi player for a concert, and only Shamsu was available. So I said, all right, I am angry with him, he didn’t do what I wanted, but let him come and play. He came and played and I was stunned, because he was playing in the Lakha style. His bowing, his fingering, everything was like Lakha.

I read this anecdote to suggest a connection between listening and impulsive memory. The contact between the teacher and the pupil marked by listening becomes a force-field for the dispersal of sensuous knowledge and embodied memory. In a similar vein, Michael Taussig argues that “imitation and sensuousness” can both stand in for the mimetic (Taussig, 1993, p. 20). Enabled through cassette technologies, version recordings engendered affective constellations where the bodies of both fans/listeners and singers became immersed in the recuperation of aural memories associated with the original song. ¹³ As Alka Yagnik shares her early experiences of being in the industry:

I’ve held the examples of Lataji and Ashaji before me. My aim has been to try and sing the way they do, to come as close to them as possible. ..In fact in the beginning music directors would say “voh Lataji vali baat aani chahiye, voh Asha ji vali baat aani chahiye [give us the same magic as Lata ji, give us the same magic as Asha ji].” I tried to achieve “voh baat” but voh baat to unhee mein hai [but that magic is only in them] (my translations). (Filmfare, 1990)

This desire to “come as close to them as possible” as well as the “inability” to create the same affect (voh baat), brings us to the core idea of mimesis or “the art of becoming something else, of becoming other” (Taussig, 1993, p. 36). Imitating the style of an aural star to enter the networks of recorded sound—the machinic—was as much about acknowledging the aura of the playback singer’s voice as the desire to sing “as close to her as possible.” The technologies of sound reproduction, enabling the proliferation of film music through cheaply available cassettes, led to the expansion of affective alliances, mimetic faculties, and sensuous knowledge.

Musical commodities such as cover versions available in abundance target distracted buyers in crowded bazaars, offering aural, visual, and bodily sensations. Listening bodies respond to a familiar song by following its sonic trace. This experience of listening is as much about memory as about the flow of sounds. Taking a cue from Deleuze’s understanding of time-image in cinema, I suggest that the copy singer’s voice activates impersonal, nomadic memory, not necessarily connected to an actual event (Colebrook, 2002, pp. 53–54). The effect generated by these sonic fields is a sensate experience not driven by any particular order or meaning.

Refashioning the “Authentic”: The Marketing of Nostalgia

As I have demonstrated, version recordings need to be seen as cultural forms that created new modes of listening through distraction, expanding the recursive field of Hindi film songs. The “low-brow” audio companies made a huge dent in the musical market in this expanded field. After enjoying a monopoly over the film music market for almost 50 years, HMV faced its biggest challenge with the arrival of cassette technology. The circulation of pirated musical commodities and version recordings had placed the company on the backfoot. Severe restrictions placed on HMV to get licenses for manufacturing of audio cassettes further hampered the business interests of the company. To establish them as distinct, HMV started adding “original soundtrack recording” as a prominent label on its cassettes and advertising material (Image 2). More specifically, to meet the challenge of version recordings, HMV stepped up its production of special film song compilations. Piggybacking on star singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mohammed Rafi, and Kishore Kumar, HMV repackaged musical content from its own archive and released them as new innovative brands. Moods and Memories, Enchanting Hour, Magic Moments and Best of with various artists were released during this phase. The company’s strategy was to woo the middle-class listener, always ready to pay more for the “authentic” voice. The increased proliferation of version recordings in the post-1985 phase resulted in HMV/RPG introducing special series, like All Time Greats and Golden Collection from its older repertoire with digitally mastered sound. Promoted as items for collectors, these products were retailed to institutions like Citibank, which used them for promotions (Kohli-Khandekar, 2010, p. 184). It was evident that to sell the idea of “authenticity,” a new kind of listening public had to be imagined.

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Image 2.

Source: National Film Archive of India, Pune.

For Walter Benjamin the presence of the original was central to any concept of the “authentic” and the original was usually placed “outside technical—and, of course, not only technical—reproducibility” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 220). Rey Chow has argued that for Benjamin, authenticity was a cultural construct produced at a chronological moment when the “authentic” had already been superseded (Chow, 1989, pp. 63–86). Jonathan Sterne suggests that notions of originality and authenticity get transformed by the culture of reproduction into a new form of originality where the copies, far from being separate, always remain connected to the source of their origin (Sterne, 2006, p. 220). In the light of these debates I would like to argue that in order to push their music as “authentic,” HMV set itself up to create new networks, social relations, and symbols. From the mid-1980s up to the mid-1990s, HMV flooded the music market with compilations of film songs of the 1950s and 1960s, evoking nostalgia for the past. A substantial section of these albums contained songs exclusively sung by Lata. In fact, HMV was often unofficially referred to as LMV or “Lata Mangeshkar’s Voice” because of the number of compilations the company released foregrounding her voice. For HMV, Lata symbolized not just the golden period of Hindi film songs over which they had enjoyed a monopoly for more than 50 years, but also the fact that they were the owners of her authentic recorded voice. Not only was she known for her great voice and musicality but also had the experience of working with “great masters” like Ghulam Haider, Khem Chand Prakash, Anil Biswas and Sajjad Hussain. If HMV wanted to sell repackaged music to feed nostalgia, Lata Mangeshkar could certainly not be bypassed.

In 1987, HMV (now under the RPG group) hosted a public event in Bombay to felicitate Lata Mangeshkar for completing 40 years in the industry. ¹⁴ The same year, HMV brought out print advertisements projecting her as the “voice of a nation.” A photograph of Lata with a map of India embedded on the image of a gramophone record in the background completes the visual landscape of the advertisement which was printed in magazines like Filmfare (Image 3). The text: “the voice of a nation,” in the middle of the record underscored Lata’s voice in the aural domain of the nation. The copy of the advertisement read as follows:

The year, 1947, dil mera toda mujhe kahin ka na choda, the film Majboor. Unobtrusively one afternoon, the Lata legend was born. In making that quiet transition from Noorjehan to Lata Mangeshkar, Hindi film music turned a corner. Things would never be the same again. Lata’s music cast a spell that would outlast several generations of actresses. From Nimmi in Barsaat to Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili, actresses have used Lata’s voice. (Filmfare, 1987, p. 33)

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Image 3.

Source: National Film Archive of India, Pune.

The advertisement carefully evokes the past from 1947, the year Lata sang “Dil mera toda” for Ghulam Haider in Majboor. Several biographical accounts have acknowledged Haider as an important figure who was quick to discern the unique quality in Lata’s voice, despite its “thin” quality. It is well known that Haider asked Lata to sing “Dil mera toda” on the same evening when S. Mukherjee rejected Lata’s voice (Kabir, 2009, pp. 40–41). The association of Lata’s music with 1947 as a marker of new beginnings institutionalized her as the voice of the nation and lent credibility to HMV. HMV used its publicity material to nostalgically reconstruct a past that was no longer available. The period evoked in the advertisement is bookended with Ram Teri Ganga Maili that was released in 1985. This citation is particularly important as it draws attention to Lata’s rendition of songs like “Sun sahiba sun,” that was widely circulated through pirate distribution networks and cover versions.

In his work on the cultural biography of commodities, Igor Kopytoff suggests that commoditization needs to be looked at as “a process of becoming rather than as an all-or-none state of being” (Kopytoff, 1986, p. 73). Kopytoff views excessive commoditization as a process that “homogenizes value, while the essence of culture is discrimination” (Ibid.). In order to meet the challenge posed by version recordings with an accent on imitations, HMV created special collections of Lata’s songs, by holding on to the trace of her voice as a locus of authenticity. The first person narration worked like glue to hold together musical and non-musical elements of a narrative that articulated the authenticity of an idealized past.

Several of HMV’s compilations had exclusive jacket covers and contained Lata’s first person commentary. For instance, in 1987, HMV brought out My Favourites, Lata Mangeshkar, in an album of four cassettes which sold well in the market (HMV PMLP 1170–1173 and TPH 41316–41319). The launch was strategically timed to coincide with the celebrations commemorating Lata’s 40 years in the industry. But what made this album stand apart was the use of Lata’s signature on the album cover, accompanied by her photograph. It may not be a coincidence that Filmfare carried “the voice of a nation” advertisement just three months after it published a 12-page cover story on Lata in June 1987. The story, titled “the Lata legend” was accompanied by several photographs of the singer chronicling her life (Image 4). Prominently displayed amongst these were photographs of her taken with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Written by Punita Bhatt, the article said “we, who have become a nation of second raters and compromisers, we would do better to imitate her [Lata Mangeshkar] in unabashed pursuit of excellence and achievement” (Filmfare, 1987, p. 31). ¹⁵ The magazine carried a review of My Favorites, Volume II, which referred to the selection as spell binding (My Favorites Volume II PMLP 1121–1122). Making a reference to the criticism leveled against the first volume of the album, the review clarified:

[But] the singer makes it clear for the benefit of professional quibblers that her choice is based on association: in a certain song it was the tune that attracted her, in another it was the lyric. In a third, it was the memory triggered off by the melody. (Jha, 1988b)

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Image 4.

Source: National Film Archive of India, Pune.

The reviewer is referring here to Lata’s opening words of the album “My Favorites, Volume II”: her voice playing the dual role of a singer and a storyteller. Lata’s narrative account of her own experiences of recording the “original” songs lends authenticity to the past. The insertion of personal memories and associations in My Favorites creates a unique synthesis of meaning and wholeness. More importantly, the past in this construction begins pointedly in 1947. The recirculation of songs from the past through the framework of nostalgia and remembrance resonates with Kopytoff’s notion of the compulsive drive for singularization, amidst homogenization. ¹⁶ By pushing into the market special collections of Lata’s songs from the past, HMV constructed itself as a quasi-public institution, claiming its rightful ownership of the most treasured aural archive—the voice of Lata Mangeshkar. The “voice of a nation” advertisement and Lata as a national symbol became crucial for this public posturing. HMV was also symbolically presenting itself as playing a cultural role through its hold over an authentic aural archive—film music of the 1950s and the 1960s.

One must recall here the contentious relationship between the state and the film industry in the 1950s when B.V Keskar, India’s first Minister of Information and Broadcasting, stopped the airing of film songs on All India Radio (AIR) in his zeal to promote classical music (Jhingan, 2011). This relationship changed significantly after Keskar retracted his stand and film music was made available to listeners on Vividh Bharti. That the state itself was now depending on the film industry to commemorate important events in its cultural life, and to push forward a notion of national cultural imaginary can be gauged from the episode related to the first public performance of the song “Ae mere watan ke logon.” The song was performed by Lata on the occasion of India’s Republic Day in 1963, at a public function in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru. It is well known that Nehru was moved to tears when Lata sang this song written by Kavi Pradeep as a response to the Sino–Indian war of 1962. Subsequently, HMV’s decision to release a record album of the song turned it into an eternal homage to soldiers who died during several episodes of India’s border conflicts with China and Pakistan. “Ae mere watan” is evoked each time as a collective expression of our tribute to the “martyrs.” Nehru’s reaction contributed in no small measure to the aura as well as to the iteratibility of the song. According to Raju Bharatan, “the moment Nehru reacted, HMV acted,” to release a special private record of the song (Bharatan, 1995, p. 75). Patriotic songs like “Ae mere watan” have been regularly re-introduced into the market by HMV during special moments such as the 50^th year of India’s independence, when a special CD (CDNF 154027) of both film and non-film patriotic songs were rendered by Lata Mangeshkar. ¹⁷

Aural Memory and the Selection of Time

HMV introduced Shraddhanjali, My Tribute to the Immortals in 1992 (CD PSLP 5590). In this exclusive collector’s album, Lata presented songs by “immortal artists” in her own voice, as a “humble tribute” to the singers. The jacket cover of the album carried Lata’s photograph accompanied by her signature. ¹⁸ A framed image with head shots of all the six male artists who were commemorated in the album completed the visual layout of the jacket cover (Image 5). In the first volume, Lata paid tribute to K.L Saigal, Pankaj Malik, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Hemant Kumar, and Kishore Kumar. In her introductory commentary, she referred to the collection as a tribute not only to the singers and musicians of yesteryears but also to the musical history and heritage of India.

The album opens with a haunting refrain in Lata’s voice from Lekin. This short alap is significant since it symbolizes the fluid dispersal of her disembodied voice into an abstract notion of space and temporality. Each artist’s original singing voice is introduced briefly into the sound track. This is followed first by Lata’s commentary about the artist and with her singing a selected song from the artist’s repertoire. An example of this is the way the song “Babul mora naihar chhuto hi jaye” from Street Singer (Phani Majumdar, 1938) in K.L Saigal’s voice plays in the background as Lata speaks about him. According to one reviewer, this “takes one back to the Saigal era” (Screen, 1992).

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Image 5.

Source: Personal Collection.

In the second volume of Shraddhanjali, brought out in February 1994, Lata paid homage to women artists of the past, namely, Kanan Bala, Parul Ghosh, Zohra Bai Ambalewali, Amir Bai Karnataki, and Geeta Dutt. The basis for selecting the artists was their legendary status even after their death. ¹⁹ A pronounced use of reverberation adds to the nostalgic effect in the aural register of the album. Following the same template as Volume I, voices of older artists are recalled. The first singer chosen for the tribute is Kanan Devi. Like Lata, we are expected to respond to Kanan Devi’s soft and distant voice as it fades into the sound track and Lata’s voice comes on with “….Mujhe yaad aa rahi hai…..” [I remember …this artist whom we all knew as Kanan Devi]. This encounter with memory is presented as a temporal journey we take with Lata as our guide. The faint voice of the bygone artist (the volume is kept very low in comparison to Lata’s voice), simulates our struggle with memory, its fleeting and uneven nature. We are provided a visceral sense that Kanan Devi’s voice is being pulled out of Lata’s reservoir of memories. In this mode of remembrance the past gets reconstituted through a performance of the self. This engagement with the past, with its memory, re-enacts the erasure of these voices, and their effacement. As soon as we connect with Kanan Devi’s voice, it is gone. Shraddhanjali can be seen as an archive that relives the journey of the female voice in film songs and its ephemeral quality. The song emerges as a palimpsest carrying voices of the past, their distinct texture, and timbre. It is ironic that through this device, HMV participated at least symbolically, in the erasure of its own archive.

What exactly is being remembered or effaced by these special premium musical albums/objects that seek to honor the dead? More importantly, how are we being addressed as listeners through these products? For the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, human memory requires some degree of externalization and has therefore been “technical from the start” (Stiegler, 2010, p. 67). As a tribute to “immortal singers” of the past, the Shraddhanjali album tried to evoke memories of their songs, as an eternal homage to a bygone era. What is important to note is that the past here is an abstract, naturalized category.

The album was received with mixed response in the media. Many critics referred to it as a version recording, though presented with a distinctive taste. According to Harish Bhimani, this was an offering to the “new generation who had missed the magic of their [the legendary singers] music, in Lata’s voice” (Bhimani, 1995, p. 242). A more exclusive version of Shraddhanjali with four extra songs was offered to Diners’ club members with a booklet containing lyrics and exclusive photographs. An HMV advertisement wooing the diners’ club members further underscored Lata’s authorial vision over the product: an open notebook with “My Tribute to the Immortals,” written by hand, along with Lata Mangeshkar’s signature was framed with a quill and an inkpot (Image 6).

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Image 6.

Source: Personal Collection.

While nostalgia music reigned in the 1990s, the competition between T-series and HMV got further intensified in another arena. Both companies were offering royalty in advance to film producers in return for music rights for contemporary films. In this phase, HMV made a big turn-around with commercially (and musically) successful films like Chandni and Maine Pyar Kiya. Gulshan Kumar went one step forward to produce his own films, creating a stir in the film industry with the success of films like Aashiqui (Mahesh Bhatt, 1990) and Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin (Mahesh Bhatt, 1991), both riding on the unparalleled popularity of their songs.

Despite this boom in contemporary film music, publishing companies continued to make the most of old film songs through special compilations. “The music industry is in a very reverential mood,” wrote Subhendu Mukherjee, a journalist in The Times of India (Mukherjee, 1994).In what can be seen as a mimetic interaction with HMV, T-series collaborated with Anuradha Paudwal to bring out a series of albums as a tribute to “legendary” composers like Madan Mohan and Roshan. T-series tried to change its image of a low-brow mass oriented audio company (Image 7). Most of the songs chosen for the tribute album were Lata’s songs. Video CDs of these albums (Tribute to Madan Mohan, SVCD1140), depicting Anuradha Paudwal in an off-white sari, performing on a somber but ornately designed stage set were also introduced into the market. A full scale orchestra with string, brass, and rhythm sections completed the mise-en-scene. T-series roped in Ramesh Aiyyar, an ace arranger who reportedly researched for months to bring together a “full orchestra to give it that feel.” ²⁰ The impulse to record, to create, and project a certain aesthetic value, motivated the recordings. The overriding force was to enter a niche market with nostalgia, not through claims of originality, but of expertise. Access to new technologies, refurbished studios, a full scale orchestra, and a skilled and motivated singer allowed T-series entry into the arena of “enclaved” musical commodities (Appadurai, 1986). “I had never rehearsed the way I did for the tribute albums… I knew that we were doing something that stalwarts had done,” said Paudwal. ²¹ The desire to recreate a bygone era was also intimately tied with the desire to hold on to it. For a company like T-series, which was a late entrant to the business of music, it was important to recreate the past in order to insert itself in it.

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Image 7.

Source: Personal Collection.

These sonic events testify to the ways in which discourses shaping taste and aesthetic value in music remain contingent upon not just the inherent value of music but the material production around it. As I have demonstrated, material practices such as dubbing and version recordings in the era of cassette technology played a key role in enabling an affective alliance between listeners/fans and their aural stars. Music recording companies work through sonorous textures to take possession of the past, or conversely, to stake their claim on the “authentic” during moments of instability. Moreover, as I have tried to show, aural memories and sensual knowledge enter the realm of circulation, to produce new experiences of listening.