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Recipient of Nation’s highest civilian honor – Bharat Ratna and film industry’s highest honour, Dada Saheb Phalke Award, Lata Mangeshkar today turns 84. Glamsham.Com in our Lata Mangeshkar Special has been enlightening our readers with few interesting anecdotes.
Today we disclose Lata Mangeshkar’s Godfather, Ghulam Haider, who in the early 40s brought a revolution in Bollywood music by combining Hindustani ragas into simplified versions to suit the taste of common man. After he left to Pakistan due to partition, Naushad took the trend ahead. Ghulam Haider’s biggest contribution to Indian film music is that he discovered Lata Mangeshkar and dared to introduce her when the film industry had rejected her.
In an interview, Lata Mangeshkar herself disclosed, ”Ghulam Haider is truly my Godfather. It was his confidence in me that he fought for me to tuck me into the Hindi Film Industry which otherwise had rejected me.”
Remembering her early rejection Lata once said, ”Ghulam Haider was the first music director who showed complete faith in my talent. He introduced me to many producers including S. Mukerji, a big name in film production, but when he too declined me Ghulam Sahab was very furious. Hence finally he convinced Bombay Talkies, a banner bigger than S. Mukherji and introduced me through their movie MAJBOOR.”
Lata continues, ”To make the occasion a gala event and to show-case my talent to the entire film fraternity, Ghulam Sahab invited many great music directors of that era like Naushad, Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Hussain Lal Bhagatram etc. to witness the recording of my first song, ‘Dil tera toda…”
After the song was recorded there was a thunderous applause and the industry music legends welcomed Lata Mangeshkar with open hands.
