The singer Raveena, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from India after the 1984 Sikh genocide, has been listening to the late playback vocalist and composer Lata Mangeshkar her entire life. She grew up on Bollywood films and music, and Mangeshkar’s distinctive, piercing soprano is among the first voices she remembers hearing as a kid.
Mangeshkar died on February 6 in Mumbai at the age of 92. Throughout Mangeshkar’s towering career, she recorded an estimated 25,000 songs, and her four-octave voice became an indelible part of Bollywood history. She worked as a teenage actress in the 1940s and eventually moved behind the scenes as a playback singer, growing into an icon lovingly called “the nightingale of Bollywood.” While she primarily performed in Hindi, she also sang in Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, and more.
Raveena’s new album, Asha’s Awakening, is out on Feb. 11, and…
