Lata lends immortality to Vajpayee's 'Antarnaad'

Album: "Antarnaad"

Poems by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee

sung by Lata Mangeshkar

music by Mayuresh Pai

Label: Musicurry.

What can one say when the nightingale of India, at age 75, decides to lend her voice to the poems of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee?

But let's just withdraw from the power play between politics and art and look at the album as a true work of art created by a phenomenal singer and a bard who happens to be the most important leader in the country.

Let's judge the songs for what they are...exquisitely carved curios full of compassion.

A few other singers, including Jagjit Singh, have sung Vajpayee's poetry. But none like Lata Mangeshkar.

She imparts a profound sense of passion, pain and yearning to the simple poems about the poet's childhood ("Aao man ki gaanthe khole"), national hope ("Aao phir se diya jalayen") and introspection ("Kya khoya kya paaya jag mein").

Lata absorbs the words into her being and brings them out after making a permanent place for the poetry in her soul.

In the 1960s, she had sung an imperishable tragic song for soldiers, "Ae mere watan ke logon".

In this album, she does Vajpayee's anti-war anthem, "Jung na hone denge" with a gusto and power that belies her years by decades. How do we describe the phenomenal Lata?

A children's chorus as well as the other orchestral embellishments are so subtly evoked that listeners are likely to miss the fascinating finesse that has gone into producing this intricate album.

Young, untried composer Mayuresh Pai rightly keeps the tunes simple and melodious. He knows when the nightingale sings she doesn't need props. In giving the album its colour of life, Lata paints every emotion possible through words that have acquired immortality by her rendering.

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