He had a seductively soft and caressing voice that captivated millions all over India. But he had a special status in Bengal where he was a god-like figure. If god could sing, he would sing in Hemant Kumar’s voice, said Salil Chowdhury.

She commanded a fee of Rs.1,000 per song in the 1940s, when Lata Mangeshkar charged Rs.50 per song. Her voice — sprightly, expressive and one of free-wheeling abandon — had a charisma of its own. It could give any song

Way back in 1945, KL Saigal heard the song Dil jalta hai jo jalne do, which was all Saigal in voice and style and a masterpiece of melancholy.  “I don’t remember singing this song,” he said. He was astonished to hear that it was actually rendered by

Till the day I’m alive and till Lata is there, she will always be my first choice,” composer Madan Mohan minced no words when Asha Bhosle once complained, “You give me ordinary tunes, but Didi your best tunes.” S D Burman

There is only one sun and one moon, there can be only one T M S,” said legendary Tamil film music composer M S Viswanathan at an event many years ago. T M Soundararajan was one of the greatest singers in Tamil cinema history.

Anand Akela from Marwar Mundwa. Allah Rakha from Jhumritalaiya. Sharad Agarwal from Rajnandgaon. And countless others from Yeotmal, Mancherial, Nanded, Karim Nagar, Nepa Nagar, Indore, Rajkot, Beed, Ujjain and Dhanbad. People to whom I’ll forever be indebted for introducing some of the greatest Hindi film songs to

Flute maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia seems a genetic oddity — a consummate and world renowned musician born to a wrestler father and a homemaker mother who never went to school. The parents had no artistic pretensions, the mother died young, when the boy was barely four, and the

For Hindustani music lovers with Hyderabad connections, the sixties and seventies of the last century were a golden era of sorts, with high quality concerts on offer at the Health League grounds and other open-air venues in the twin cities, as well as the modern Ravindra Bharati

Geet Gaya Pathharon Ne.’ This lovely song from the 1960s Hindi film of the same name had me wrong-guessing the identity of its singer. Was it Asha Bhosle or Geeta Dutt, I wondered. I could not make up my mind, for the voice sounded slightly different from

In 1937, a Bombay business wanted the best and most prestigious singer to perform at a family event. Kundan Lal Saigal was offered Rs.25,000 for a few hours. But he preferred to keep his promise to a poor lighting assistant, whose daughter was getting married. Saigal sang