Lata Mangeshkar

Lata Mangeshkar, born Hemalata in Indore, was an Indian playback singer whose career in film music spanned eight decades and who recorded songs in more than thirty-six Indian languages. The daughter of the classical singer and actor Deenanath Mangeshkar, she began working after his death in 1942 and moved to Mumbai in 1945; her song Aayega Aanewaala in the film Mahal (1949) helped win recognition for playback singers, until then uncredited. In 1963, during the Sino-Indian War, she sang Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo before Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1989 and the Bharat Ratna in 2001, and died in 2022 after treatment for COVID-19 and pneumonia.