![Image](https://lataonline.com//upload/2020-10-04-05-42-120Lata-MSS.jpg)
Good morning.
I am posting my thoughts under general discussions because what I wish to state and invite your responses to goes beyond personalities.
We lost Bharata Ratna Lata Mangeshkar to Covid 19. She was the nightingale I heard on Vividhbharati almost 24 x 7 for decades with her high pitched voice that was like a divine instrument. Lata meant sweetness, perfection of intonation and modulation and a most sattvic kind of music that was guaranteed to please and soothe unless you were in some agitated state and unable to relate to the sattvic quality. Singing of love, sacrifice, pining for the beloved, and reaching to the beyond, she delivered every time. It cannot be held against her that Hindi music fell from melody and purity to noise and meaningless lyrics over time. Her song in Lagaan pretty much made me sad that her voice was becoming her liability. But Lata ruled our hearts and ears for very very long. Truly a Bharata Ratna.
Contrast her with MSS. The Bharata Ratna who was the jewel in the crown of Carnatic music, continuing to give us a divine dose from dawn to late night, every day, through radio, Internet, clips in Whatsapp, FB, YT,.... Say it and she is there. She also lives through Kuldeep Pai and TM Krishna and so many others who leverage her music.
I feel the two Bharata Ratnas show what is really great about Indian sensibilities about music, albeit in contrasting ways.
Singing is a personal journey to perfection. Our raga-based musical aesthetics make it eminently suited to the human voice and allows vocal music to become all-consuming. Accompaniment, dramatisation, context, all only add to an excellence in aesthetics based on melody and rhythm.
Lyrics are almost everything after the raga and tune. If one does not present the words and the emotion right, that music is gone. All the Rahman effects and overtheatrical sounds and noises simply subtract from the fundamental excellence of Indian music.
Both Lata and MSS were original. All me-too renditions however good are for me nothing compared to the original. It is as if when I hear and enjoy a TMK or a Sooryagayatri, my heart has within it MSS singing the song.
I think Lata has not spawned such a remix phenomenon as much as MSS did.
Lata was a singular force who took over once the tunesmith and lyricist gave her the brief. You do not see in her music the the infrastructure of support behind it. MSS was in contrast a temple deity in a chariot procession and you saw all the preparations, support structure, decorations, all adding value to the experience although the core of it was the voice and the spirit of MSS.
The more dimensions of orchestration, visualisation, and filigree we add to Indian vocal music, the more it detracts from the purity of the experience. There has to be a modicum of accompaniment of course, but let us bring back the spirit of Lata and MSS by dismantling the bells and whistles and giving free rein to pure vocal music. Some musicians recognize this and do very well.