The voices of Indian film music

In India, film songs are not just part of films. They are sung at weddings, played in buses and temples, and shared across generations. A small number of singers and composers created much of this vast musical heritage. Here are the voices that defined it.

The queens of playback

Lata Mangeshkar recorded songs for more than seven decades and in dozens of languages, and composers wrote melodies to suit her voice. Her younger sister Asha Bhosle built a different career, mastering cabaret numbers, ghazals and pop; Guinness World Records named her the most recorded artist in music history.

The male legends

Mohammed Rafi could sing devotional songs, romantic duets and rock-and-roll numbers with equal ease. Kishore Kumar, who had no formal training, brought yodelling, humour and deep feeling to his songs and won a record eight Filmfare awards for playback singing. In the South, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam recorded tens of thousands of songs across languages, and K. J. Yesudas won a record eight National Film Awards for playback.

The composers

R. D. Burman brought rock, jazz and Latin rhythms into Hindi film music in the 1970s. Ilaiyaraaja blended Tamil folk and Western classical music in more than a thousand films. A. R. Rahman introduced digital production and global sounds in the 1990s and went on to win two Oscars. Lyricist Gulzar wrote many of the words that these composers set to music.

The new generation

In the 2000s, Shreya Ghoshal and Sonu Nigam became the leading voices of Hindi film. In the streaming era, Arijit Singh has become one of the most-followed artists on Spotify worldwide, while Diljit Dosanjh has taken Punjabi music to stadiums and the Coachella festival.

Classical roots

Many of these singers learnt Indian classical music, and the line between film and classical music has always been porous. Masters such as Bhimsen Joshi, M. S. Subbulakshmi, Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain were household names too, and their influence can be heard in countless film songs.

A living tradition

Technology has changed how songs are made and heard, from gramophone records to streaming apps, but the role of film music in Indian life has hardly changed. A song from 1960 can still top a playlist today — proof of the lasting craft of these artists.