Regional Playback Singers have been the anchors to the ever widening sea of Playback Singing In India. Amidst the Indian Scenario, where entertainment is catered through films to a large extent, the role of playback singers is worth mentioning and praiseworthy.
The Playback Singers of the East include Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, Manna Dey, Hemanta Mukherjee, Dwijen Mukherjee, Geeta Dutt, Vasundhara Das, Shaan, Alka Yagnik, Babul Supriyo, Shreya Ghoshal, Kishore Kumar.
Sandhya Mukhopadhyay, the singing siren of Bengal began her career in Mumbai singing Hindi songs as a playback singer with a song in the film Anjan Garh at the age of 17. After her marriage to the Bengali poet Shyamal Gupta she settled in her domicile city of Kolkata, while her husband went on to inscribe the lyrics for many of her famous songs, she was to foremost singer to sing them in her harmonious voice. Her most famous collaboration is probably with the Bengali singer Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay with whom she sang countless duets, primarily as playback for Bengali films produced from Kolkata. Her songs still echo the mellifluous genre of the eighties.
In an era when singing stalwarts, like, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar subjugated the hearts of Indian millions, Manna Dey`s elite approach of singing put him beyond apart from the rest of the crowd. With his strong foothold in Classical music, Manna Dey awed the listeners with his mesmerised songs. Geeta Dutt had been the antecedent to Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle and unfurled a genre of her own where she competed none but herself. However her shattering of personal ties with Guru Dutt paved the way for her aspiring failure.
Shreya Ghoshal is an Indian singer who has rendered her voice in many Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood movies. With a moonlit twinkle in her calm yet determined eyes, she has undertaken a journey to the heaven of creative world. Other than Hindi, she has also sung in languages like Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi. Her commencement of the melodic odyssey started as she started learning the nuances of music from her mother who is a post-graduate literature student. She has started companioning her mother on harmonium from the tender age of four years. She was raised at Rawatbhata, a small town near Kota, Rajasthan as her father used to work at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre as a nuclear power plant engineer for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. The life at Rawatbhata was simple, pristine unpolluted and far from the maddening crowd the cultural programmes and the societal gatherings added to the making of Shreya.
Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle are the gems of Madhya Pradesh, Central India. Lata Mangeshkar is a singer from India with a career that has spanned more than six decades. She is the only playback singer to have been awarded the Bharat Ratna, the nation`s highest civilian honour. Although she sang mainly for Hindi language and Marathi language films, Lata Mangeshkar`s popularity and influence transcends barriers of region and language. She has sung 35 major Indian languages. Lata is also popularly referred to as the `Nightingale of India`. Asha Bhosle is considered as one of the most versatile of South Asian singers - her range of songs includes film music, pop, ghazals, bhajans, traditional Indian Classical music, folk songs, qawwalis, and Rabindra Sangeet. She has sung in over 14 languages including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, English, Russian and Malay). Asha Bhosle is believed to have sung over 12,000 songs, but such estimates are not easy to validate.
Mahalaxmi Iyer is the diamond from South India. K S Chitra, the nightingale of South India, was born on July 27, 1963 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala into a musician`s family. Mahalaxmi Iyer is an accomplished Indian playback singer, best known for her Hindi and Tamil songs. She has sung songs in many Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese and Malayalam. Kavita Krishnamurthy is another singing stalwart from South India who has rendered her voice in numerous Bollywood songs. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kavita Krishnamurthy slowly, but steadily carved a niche in the stardom as the `most versatile and technically gifted female singers in the music-reliant Indian film industry`. Kavita was born in an artistic background. Her father and mother both loved classical Indian music and dance. Her father has also worked for the Education and Cultural Affairs Ministry. From a very young age, Kavita started receiving music lessons. It was obvious for her to learn the Carnatic style of music and her mother was also searching for an expert one but could not find anybody near their home. So her mother enrolled Kavita in Hindustani classical music. Young Kavita spent a great deal of time with her Bengali aunt and uncle. For her, they were her second parents. She also learnt the Bengali style of Rabindra Sangeet under their influence.
Hariharan who hails from Thiruvanthapuram is a treasure of the Hindi Film Industry. Hariharan is one of the well renowned Indian Playback Singers in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bhojpuri and Marathi movies, and also a recognised Ghazal singer, and one of the forerunners of Indian fusion music. Hariharan`s melody is hugely appreciated by critics and audiences as well. S. P. Balasubrahmanyam is another gifted soul from South. S. P. Balasubrahmanyam or Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam is an intellectually productive singer hailing from India. S. P. Balasubrahmanyam is reckoned the most gifted singer who possesses `incredible vocal range, deep rich voice, and mastery of style, technique and control`. This made him achieve supremacy over various genres of Indian music. Today he is considered as the most sought after playback singer. He has sung 17 songs in just 12 hours in recording studios.
Sadhana Sargam is the singing siren from West India. Sadhana Sargam has been regarded as one amongst the top playback singers of Indian film industry. Her original name is Sadhana Ghanekar. She has also sung songs in a number of Indian languages. Sadhana Sargam has also received training in Indian classical music. Pankaj Udhas Pankaj Udhas is an established Ghazal singer. The unique quality of Pankaj Udhas is that he has developed a singing style that involves Urdu verses of poets set in the musical tunes. This unique singing style has also been found among the maestros like Jagjit Singh and Talat Aziz.