Kishore Kumar was undoubtedly one of our all-time greats of playback, but music buffs do want to know whether we will also get a L For Lata, M For Mukesh and R For Rafi in the months to come. After all, these are the four most mimicked singers who ruled for decades. But the basic question is: Do we need clones?
Yes, clones had their time, and we dare say, their place too. When Rafi, Mukesh and Kishore all exited quickly after each other, almost every music director from the then-top names to the smaller composers seized the naqals that arrived, because composing for these master-singers had become so much ingrained in their psyche (and to be fair even in the minds of filmmakers, stars and the audience) that the few original talents who came in like Suresh Wadkar and Hariharan (in the late ‘70s), Udit Narayan (in the year Rafi passed away) and Sukhwinder Singh had no scope for instant acceptance.
The struggle phase between their debuts and breakthroughs were thus as long as a full 17 years for Hariharan, 12 for Sukhwinder Singh, and 8 for Udit Narayan. At a wait of six years, Suresh Wadkar, thanks largely to Raj Kapoor’s preference for him over Anwar in Prem Rog, was the luckiest of the lot.
But the field opened up instantly for names that sang (or could sing) like Rafi, Mukesh and Kishore. “Aap Rafi ki style mein gaate ho, ki Kishore ki?” was the first query a struggling singer was asked. A combination of an appealing ‘hero’s voice’ (as it was termed then) and (next in importance) reasonable ‘sur’ (in the days of live recordings without pitch-correction software) was the prescription.
But one clone even gave way to another when some shortcomings (in either quality or professionalism) surfaced. And so, the first Rafi ‘clone’ who had come in, Anwar, soon made way for a slightly more professional if technically less-proficient Shabbir Kumar, who had a short flash of mega-hit scores like Betaab, Coolie and Pyar Jhukta Nahin. But when Mohammed Aziz came in, it became curtains for Shabbir too. Mohammed Aziz had a dream run with films like Mard, Karma and Ram Lakhan et al all the way to Khuda Gawah and beyond. There were other one-film wonders like Mangal Singh, Debashish Dasgupta and Vipin Sachdeva later, but Mohd.Aziz lost out only when trends changed and a Kumar Sanu-Udit Narayan-Abhijeet avalanche was unleashed by a new brigade of composers.
Sonu Niigaam, who arrived in 1993, of course had the talent and the vision to evolve fast into his own. Probably Rafi’s greatest devotee among them all as a person, he decided to emulate Rafi in all respects rather than curb his talent imitate the legend. And after Pardes there was no looking back for an ‘original’ Sonu, who himself has clones galore today!
On the Kishore front too, things were no different. Poor Amit Kumar (Kishore’s son) faced a pronounced struggle that never ended really, because having arrived in Kishore’s lifetime (his last 14 years), Amit always strived to carve a distinct identity. But when Kishore passed away, this ‘originality’ became his biggest undoing! Most composers preferred to go the Kumar Sanu-Vinod Rathod way, with even early Sudesh Bhosle (before they discovered the voice of Bachchan in him and made the talented singer a lost cause) and Abhijeet in the Kishore fray. Later came in some more insignificant names besides Babul Supriyo and now Arnab Chakraborty, who despite singing original songs in a few films, even participated in K For Kishore!
Kumar Sanu, of course, ruled most of the ‘90s, thanks to Nadeem-Shravan, Anu Malik and Jatin-Lalit. But as Udit (who followed a basic Rafi-like style of singing but never copied him) once pointed out, “Rafi’s style is perennial”. So by 1997, Udit had got the upper hand and Sonu too joined him at the top.
The Mukesh scenario was a shade different. Manhar, who had arrived in 1969 and was a sound-alike, shot into focus with Hero, ending a 14-year professional vanwaas. Other clones like Kamlesh Awasthi, Babla Mehta and Nalin Dave failed miserably, and with trends changing in the ‘90s, Manhar was ‘phased out’ too.
As for poor Nitin Mukesh, like Amit Kumar the genetic similarity to his father again proved to be his undoing, and though he single-handedly shouldered musical mega-hits like Kranti, Khudgarz and Eeshwar and had an unusually high average of other hit songs, a different and cruel yardstick - constant comparison to his legendary dad Mukesh - was applied to him.
The scene on the female front was, to quote Nagesh Kukunoor (who is planning a Kishore biopic) “Same Same But Different”. Yes, Anuradha Paudwal, Sadhana Sargam and Alka Yagnik were essentially in the Lata mould, but the repercussions of the exits of the three male giants had taught frontrunners Laxmikant-Pyarelal (who were - in the words of the late Manmohan Desai - numbers 1 to 10 in the ‘80s) a lesson.
Thanks to the Mangeshkars curbing work and concentrating on lucrative shows, L-P began extensively recording with and giving useful on-the-job training to Anuradha and Alka along with the highly-individualistic Kavita Krishnamurthi in evolving their own styles despite the unavoidable vocal similarities to Lata, unavoidable because Lata is the ultimate benchmark of aspiration for almost every female singer.
Meanwhile, Kalyanji-Anandji were thoroughly grooming Anuradha and Alka (along with Sadhana) too because they considered it their duty to give new talent to the industry in return for the name, fame and fortune it had given them. Anuradha, Alka and Sadhana were thus groomed in the basics of playback singing by the duo.
The result was indeed interesting. Relationships between the ruling Mangeshkar sisters and these two duos reached a nadir for obvious reasons (Lata especially had mentored the two duos at the starts of their careers), but the interesting part was that in the ‘80s what L-P did everyone followed, and so the second guard like Rajesh Roshan, Bappi Lahiri (after Kishore passed away in 1987) and Anu Malik also lessened their dependence on Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle.
The loser in all this was R.D.Burman, who loyally stuck to Lata, Asha and Amit Kumar till in desperation he made a successful but (as it turned out) fatally-late comeback with Sanu and Kavita in 1942 - A Love Story!

‘ORIGINAL’ SOUNDTRACK:

But the accepted term “Original Soundtrack” for a film score (as seen on inlays) took on a new meaning with the coming in of a multitude of new talents, thanks to the big change that gradually came in with A.R.Rahman and a resurgent Anu Malik in the mid-’90s. Among the early other harbingers of change were Vishal Bhardwaj and Ismail Darbar, though they did not sustain commercially. And Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Vishal-Shekhar and Pritam changed the musical complexion completely in the millennium, with even Himesh Reshammiya sensing the shape of things to come and creating an amalgam that was historic in itself, never mind if it was termed “hysteric” by his detractors.
The original soundtrack’s current connotation is thus of a constant demand for original voices from all kinds of origins. It has been consolidated with singers like KK, Shaan, Kunal Ganjawala, Kailash Kher, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shreya Ghoshal, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Richa Sharma and others originating from pop, rock, Sufi, folk and even Pakistani and NRI sources. The era of the clones is over.
So at this point, can a ‘reality’ show like K For Kishore be termed as ‘putting the clock back’? After all, Lata and Asha have always remarked that contestants on any music reality show are merely imitating the greats (which include them of course). The other aspect is that today, the winners of reality shows largely end up as orchestra singers, or to use the current eponymous term, “performers”.
True, nostalgia has its place, and the music of the past needs to be treasured in its “unremixed” form (a faddist term to describe “Original”) but cannot it be done without finding more clones and actually doling them fat rewards?