While we are exhilarated with the news headlines such as “Indians shine at Grammy Awards 2022: Falguni Shah wins first trophy, Ricky Kej repeats 2015 triumph”, we need to pause and think whether the planet’s top music award, Grammy award is connected to the world of music or siloed and localized as privileged club? Undeniably, winning of Grammy is a prestigious honor as winners face tremendous amounts of competition and when won receive glory from all over the world.

Two Indian origin musicians, Ricky Kej and Falguni Shah etched their names in history and got global glory and made all of us extremely proud by winning the 64th Annual Grammy Awards of 2022. Unfortunately, during the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, there was no mention of India’s legendary singer Lata Mangeskar, a phenomenon that rarely happens to the music world. Not even in his speech Ricky who won Grammy for second time spoke of her. Not that we expect him to do so, but it shows the extent of ignorance towards the global music and musicians from the other world. It was a proud moment though when the Bangalore-based musician mentioned in his Grammy speech that ‘co-existence' is the theme behind his album “Divine Tides”. He added, “In India, we have a saying as "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" which means that the world is one family. And when we think that the world is one family, the only thing that comes to our mind is living in peace within the human species. But we have to go further in that, and we have to live with peace with all the entities that live on this planet, whether it is the wildlife, the forest, the elements of nature which as the water we drink, the air we breathe, the land we walk on, and Divine Tides is all about co-existence.”

To our dismay Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr, Ben Platt, and Rachel Zegler who were presented the memoriam of Grammy 2022, paid tribute to the late Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, Taylor Hawkins, and Tom Parker, among several others, but missed a mention to Lata Ji and Bappi Lahiri Ji. We may say that it was a collective apathy and nescience. It’s not that Indians have not won Grammy and therefore the Grammy team is oblivious of music maestros from India. To name a few others Ravishankar and Zubin Mehta have won many Grammy awards, Anoushka Shankar, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Zakir Hussain, A. R. Rehman, and notably Neela Vaswani for I Am Malala.

Dazzled by glamour of Grammy, some may narcissistically ask, why should they bother to mention about Lata ji in Grammy? We may agree with them only for this reason that Lata ji made us to believe that the Goddess of wisdom and art may have taken an Avtar, and she is beyond Grammy or any other award system. Thinking of evolution of vocalization of musical notes, we may recall Charles Darwin who suggested that “In the descent of man that our distant ancestors sang love songs to each other, just as birds do, before we developed language”. And undeniably, love is the divine emotion that goes behind the concept of "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam", and that has been expressed in scores of songs of Lata ji.

Recently, in 2017, in song “Cleopatra”, Indian American artist Anik Khan used Lata Ji's most iconic vocal from “Jiya Jale” (from the movie Dil Se). The phenomenal vocal quality and exceptional singing drew many artists and composure from across the world to the Lata ji's vocal repertoire. We may continue hearing others using Lata Ji’s vocals like we do hear 'Husn Hazir Hai', 'Chalte Chalte Yun Hi Koi', 'Tera Sang Pyaar Mein', and 'Wada Na Tod'. Lata Ji is a legend of international fame and her towering singing accomplishments are second to none as one can realize that she recorded more songs than the Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined! The Bharat Ratna awardee and legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar left us on Sunday, 6 February, and left a billion of people in a void. Remembrance of Legendary Lata Ji during Grammy Award 2022 would not have taken them more than their ego, I suppose!

The Melody Queen Lata Mangeshkar who sung more than 25 thousand songs between 1948 to 1974 is something unthinkable for any artist on this planet. The Book of Guinness World Record has listed Lata Mangeshkar as the most recorded artist in history, with more than 25,000 songs in 35 Indian languages. The global impact of Lata ji's vocals is profoundly great and that has left an unprecedented cultural imprint in the global music industry. Her voice quality is so fabulous that it has embellished various tracks in multiple genres of the international music, including in the fusion-tracks where it has added great value.

Incorporation of a humming by Rakim in "Addictive” made it an international hit, and no one can miss the hum and Lata ji’s great vocal prowess! It was legendary voice of Lata Ji in American song, "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai" (from 1981 movie Jyoti) that made this song to scale to top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 charts! In "Dancing Girls Theme" produced by Madlib used Lata Ji and Mohammed Rafi saheb’s very popular song "Bol Mere Sathiya" Madlib and in “Movie Finale" used Lata Ji's "Do Jhoot Jiye Ek Sach Ke Liye". In the song “Variations”, the duet of Lata Ji and Kishore Kumar of song 'Shayad Meri Shaadi' was used (from 1982 movie Souten). Himanshu Suri in a song “Swate” used Lata Ji’s voice from famous song "Mujhe Kuchh Kehna Hai' (from 1973 Movie Bobby)

Lata ji was blessed with supernatural voice quality with register to have innocence and purity, and an outstanding vocal range. The otherworldly aspect of Lataji’s singing is that her voice did not age for several decades. Despite her starting at age of 13 and about 90% of songs were composed for her were all had notes as high as to F5 or F#5 (highest note equivalent in piano), her singing never saw a slowdown. Lata ji’s singing was a phenomenon as her vocal range, vocal weight, tessitura, vocal timbre, and vocal transition points were matchlessly unusual. The average human vocal range is 3 and 1/3 octaves, and that can encompass about 40 notes that an average person can produce.

Legendary Lata ji’s singing demonstrated a vocal range over three octaves, with a popular belief that she could cover four octaves. Though range is not the only element of musical talent, and some may have different perception about it, but Lata ji was a queen who ruled in soprano class. The musical notes that were engaged by Lata Ji to produce musical sound with a precise pitch many a times used to be recited as outlaying unthinkable relationship between those notes. The melodies, those were produced by the Nightingale of India, often times amazed learned musician due to rendering of mystic, spectral and paranormal melodies. Those melodies used to make even composers astonished as they used to appear to be created by unusual connection of sequence of notes with separate tonality, pitched perfectly and sustained for right duration. In the moment of being in musical bliss, we often found that the notes captivated our listening, and that mystical part was created by her unusual voice texture, contour, motion, register, range, phrasing, articulation, and ornamentation.

To further astonish us, her singing brought atypical variations with smooth, flowing, jagged, jumpy, angular, repetitive, arching, scale like, steep, and mesmerized us with soul touching melodies. Some of Lata ji’s songs are ever green masterpiece and we note that in those singing there is an unusual way of attaining ascent or descent while covering the lowest and the highest notes. Her playback for various movie artists and different situations always needed her to create different moods or feelings, and she always managed to make songs suited to the need.

In those her singing brought atypical variations with smooth, flowing, jagged, jumpy, angular, repetitive, arching, scale like, steep, and mesmerized us with soul touching melodies. The extensive range covered (scale) with ease, always mesmerized many musicians, especially for effortlessly managing seamless rendition of graduated sequence of notes, adequate tones to match emotion, and placing intervals, in order to deliver melody with best musical impact.

If we recall her popular songs, “ajii ruthkar ab kahaan jaayiega from movie Aarzoo, 1965, composed by Shankar-Jaikishan, it may give a flavor of her range (F#5 which in antara reaches Ab5; note equivalent in piano). She performed innumerable such difficult composition songs, and from that memorable song she beautifully performed were “Ahsaan teraa hogaa mujh par from movie Junglee, 1961), “Rasik balmaa from Chori Chori, 1957). It is likely that when music maestros might be doing melodic analysis, they might be finding themselves at fix and be turning towards divinity to explain those occult melodies. When we try to demystify musical notes and melodies produced by an artist, especially like Lata ji, we turn to fundamentals of music. However, music, due to its complexity in creating melodies, intrigues bio-musicologist and music-neuroscientists who study the brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. It is postulated that the vocal folds (in vocal cord) primarily determine range, and uniqueness to the musical sound produced by a vocalist.

According to the Sean Hutchins, singing ability of a vocalist is rooted in vocal-motor control of pitch. Since vocal folds are complex in its musical sound dispensation, those study science of harmony find it perplexing when they study the combining of notes by the vocal folds. For Lata ji’s singing that produces out of world melody it appears that melody created involve unusual permutation of factorial parts such as notes sequence, variation in ascent decent, pitching, duration, and few other intricate elements. The aesthetic of musical delight produced by Lata ji is quite unique and nuances of those appeared to be multivariate and fairly complex. The underlined mathematical equations pertaining to the various variables involved in melody, can sufficiently baffle some of the brightest minds in physics and mathematics.

Considering musical scales arises from simple harmonic ratios, and the Greek mathematician Pythagoras proposed that plucking of a string at certain points is ascribed to the progression in musical scales (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do). The gradual progression in musical scales could be differentially spaced, and such pitches our ears may not pick up. This potentially is the reason behind how Lata ji’s singing created unusual melodies. The fine gradations in pitch covering scales have been attempted to be described based on the Pythagoras' pure tuning concept. The nightingale of India might have been blessed with para-human ability. It is interesting that, the nightingale wren, a bird found evergreen forest and known for its distinctive song, produces fine gradations in pitch covering scales.

When we get in the realm of enumerating melodies, the Lata ji’s expanse of coverage and variations, poses a question: how many combinations there per the available permutations and combinations of factors that affect melody. Astonishingly, three notes combination (sequence) can give rise to 2,197 melodies and going as high as ten notes melody can produce over 75 billion potential melodies (given 13 notes within the octave). It is to be noted that this computation of melody has not included other variables! This melody estimation based on involvement of number of notes, gives us a sense equivalent to infinite nature of universe(s).

Theoretical physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku, believes that the universe is a symphony of vibrating strings. the legends from India believe that the Om is the sound of the universe, and we can produce that sound through our vocal folds of our vocal cord. Indian legends described the divinity and vastness of music. This in a way confounds the belief that the utilization of vocal folds of vocal cord by Lata ji is very unusual, and perhaps it uses extensive range of combinatorics for various factors that create melody.

The legend Sarangdeva described Tana Prastaar (spread or unfold) in his book Sangitaratnakara (1225 CE), a systematic study of combinatorics of the sapta (seven) svaras (notes) in their natural ascending order are Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni. It might shed some light on the preternatural melodies production by Lata ji’s. The subsets of the saptak are called taanas (scale), and permutation of it is called the taana prastaar that can be arranged per combinatorial svars. Sarngadeva brilliantly produced an algorithm for these the taana prastaar. For seven svara, the taana prastaar can have 5040 taanas (Sangitaratnakar 1.4.62-63). Sarngadeva created a table of factorials and multiples of those factorials, which is known as the Khandmeru, and with that he became first one to provide a basis of mathematical deduction of svara(s) in all possible combination of taan(s). However, lately when music grew popularity in Europe, musical theorist Erno Lendvai, came up with a notion of golden ratio (phi) used in creating melodies. and Erno invoked Fibonacci sequence to mathematically express the work of composer Bela Bartok’s music.

Fibonacci (c.1175–1250) was an Italian mathematician who introduced the Hindu-Arabic number system to Europe. It is implicated that Fibonacci plagiarized mathematical equation of the great Indian mathematician, Virahanka. The elegant work of Parmanand Singh proved that the hyped Fibonacci Numbers has been in use in ancient and medieval India. The method for formation of sequence were given by Virahanka (between A.D. 600 and X00), Gopala (prior to A.D. 1135) and Hemacandra (c. A.D. 1150). All prior to L. Fibonacci (c. A.D. 1202). Recently, Steven Strogatz mentioned that “Let’s stop teaching the bogus rabbit story that Fibonacci told. It has become obvious that numbers that were called Fibonacci numbers, were originally came from poetry and music!” The Virhanka numbers provides a sequence that can be applied in developing poetic meters of Sanskrit verses based on the number of syllables and their arrangements in a quarter or producing sequence of notes (two to seven) for a possible permutation. Other factors composing melody can be factors and produce variation in sequence.

An article published by Professor Subhash Kak showed that the Virahaṅka numbers produces spiral, such as the pattern is produced in Romanesque broccoli. When we start to imagine the complexity of vocal folds, it is fair to assume that the vocal folds of vocal cord of Lata Ji might be atypically structured. Those vocal folds could be involved in producing sequence of notes as described by Virahaṅka, and that potentially be enabling her to produce unusually high and varied numbers of melodies. The sequences produced per Virahanka number, create an unimaginative number of complex spiral structures, such as seen in Romanesque broccoli. The marvel of mathematical sequence applied by nature, create uncountable numbers of curves, and bends in a Romanesque broccoli. Since Virahanka numbers are applied in the creation of sequence of notes, we can presume that the vocal fold of Lata ji might have such higher degree of complexity producing huge range of melodies.

While we appreciate what James Joseph Sylvester said, “May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life,” we must also appreciate that music in India has always been an integral part of socio-religious life. The Vedic literature of Hinduism and the ancient Natyashastra has description of the classical music of India. It is of a belief that Om is the sound of the universe and this most sacred syllable connects the consciousness or Atman (Self within) with the ultimate reality. It is called the Shabda Brahman (Brahman as sound) and believed to be the primordial sound (Pranava) of the universe.

According to the Einstein's theory of spacetime, the real universe is alive with vibrating energy creating sound, and space and time create textures and timbres as rich and varied as the finale of a Wagner opera. The universe is a musical opera that for our limited senses, appear to us a silent movie.

On that note, beauty of music of Lata ji might also be incomprehensible for many. Ignorance of Grammy Award 2022 about passing away of a legend may give many a similar sense as what we got about claim by Fibonacci of Virahanka sequence as of his, and formulation of a Golden Ratio (Phi) by so called mathematicians to explain music. For Indian’s devotion to Maa Saraswati, as a goddess of music, has a foundation that the vocal folds may vibrate and generate music of the universe, the most beautiful music, for ears, heart, and soul! The part of music of Lata ji that we cannot explain through biology and mathematics is what introduced the music lovers to the divinity! While Grammy Awards 2022 fails to pay tribute to Lata Mangeshkar, for Indians, the legacy of Legend Lata Ji will live in our hearts for the eternity to come!

Image source: Jagran TV