Wikipedia:VideoWiki/Lata Mangeshkar

Introduction
Lata Mangeshkar is an Indian playback singer and music director. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in India.



Early life
Lata Mangeshkar was born in 1929, to Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, a Marathi musician and his wife Shevanti in Indore.

Siblings
Lata the eldest child of the family. Meena, Asha, Usha, and Hridaynath, in birth order, are her siblings, all accomplished singers and musicians.

Learning music
Lata received her first music lesson from her father. At the age of five, she started to work as an actress in her father's musical plays.



Singing career
Lata has recorded songs in over a thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi, Hindi, and Bengali.

Father's death
In 1942, when Lata was 13 her father died of heart disease. Master Vinayak, the owner of Navyug Chitrapat movie company and a close friend of the Mangeshkar family, took care of them. He helped Lata get started in a career as a singer and actress.



Shift to Mumbai
Lata moved to Mumbai in 1945, and started taking lessons in Hindustani classical music from Ustad Aman Ali Khan of Bhindibazaar Gharana. After Vinayak's death in 1948, music director Ghulam Haider mentored her as a singer.



First hit
Haider gave Lata her first major break with the song "Dil Mera Toda, Mujhe Kahin Ka Na Chhora"—lyrics by Nazim Panipati—in the movie Majboor (1948), which became her first big breakthrough film hit.



Dilip Kumar's remark
Actor Dilip Kumar once made a mildly disapproving remark about Lata's Maharashtrian accent while singing Hindi/Urdu songs; so for a period of time, Lata took lessons in Urdu from an Urdu teacher named Shafi.



Filmfare
Lata won a Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer for Salil Chowdhury's composition "Aaja Re Pardesi" from Madhumati in 1958.

Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo
On 27 January 1963, against the backdrop of the Sino-Indian War, Lata sang the patriotic song "Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo" (literally "Oh People of My Country") in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru, then the Prime Minister of India, and is said to have brought the Prime Minister to tears.



Concerts
From the 1970s onwards, Lata Mangeshkar has also staged many concerts in India and abroad, including several charity concerts. Her first concert overseas was at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1974 and was the first Indian to do so.



1990s
During the 1990s, she recorded with music directors including Anand-Milind, Nadeem-Shravan, Jatin Lalit, Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen, Uttam Singh, Anu Malik, Aadesh Shrivastava and A R Rahman.



Bharat Ratna
In 2001, Lata Mangeshkar was awarded Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour. In the same year, she established the Master Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital in Pune, managed by the Lata Mangeshkar Medical Foundation.



Awards and recognitions
Lata Mangeshkar has won several awards and honours, including Bharat Ratna, Padma Bhushan in 1969, Padma Vibhushan in 1999, Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989, Legion of Honour in 2007, among several others.