Entertainment Society of Goa’s Cinephile Film Club hosted ‘The September Sisters, a special programme on late Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, two of the greatest cultural icons of the country, who share their birthdays in September. The programme was an audio-visual discussion moderated by Archisman Mozumder, an avid music listener.
The special programme saw the legendary sisters’ songs being clubbed together by genres with the experts analysing their extraordinary vocals.
Kushal Gopalka is a musicologist, historian and archivist, and described the sisters’ art of singing as “a flowing stream of water with all its variations of lightness, heaviness and purity.”
According to Kushal, Lata was a singer with an exceptional quality of ‘throwing’ knowing well that her skill would get the top result for sure. He described Asha as a singer with a ‘measured’ approach; while also admitting that it’s absolutely difficult to distinguish in terms of quality, efficiency and range of both the sisters’ voice.
Pavan Jha, who is one of the foremost authorities on music in India, saluted the sisters as ‘voices of the subcontinent’. Both, Lata and Asha, have expertly sung in a Nepali film, and were mesmerising with their high quality technical abilities that is said to have dazed their male singer counterparts regularly.
In one of the capsules, the songs of Lata and Asha picturised on Helen, who debuted at 15 years of age; were featured. Both sisters sung almost all genres and the auditorium was enthralled with the stunning range of songs decked with amazing dancing skills of Helen. “Usually, the dancers don’t have a long shelf life. Nevertheless, if Lata and Asha were not there, what would Helen’s fate be?,” asked Pavan, who saluted Asha for creating her own space despite Lata’s success.
