Kavita Krishnamurthy: 'Dubbing for Lataji was the best learning phase of my life'

Tu Hi Re, the simmering centrepiece of Mani Ratnam's Bombay, which just completed 30 years, has travelled well.

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A low, hesitant invocation, it moves towards a crescendo and hits high notes of a kind ones that playback singer Kavita Krishnamurthy, 67, cites as music's non-existent “Z scale”.

In the long arc of Krishnamurthy's five-decade career, the duet with Hariharan, was neither her debut nor her most-decorated song. Yet, it has stood the test of time. Just like so many others in the singer's oeuvre of over 25,000 songs across languages. From the sultry romp of Hawa hawai (Mr. India, 1987) to the intimate Pyar hua chupke se (1942: A Love Story, 1994), the playful Aankhon ki gustakhiyaan (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, 1999) the powerful Dola re (Devdas, 2002) her duet with Shreya Ghoshal to her graceful renditions of Tagore songs and other devotional bhajans, Krishnamurthy's diverse journey has chronicled India’s streaming soundscape.The artiste will mark her golden jubilee in Hindi film music next year her first Hindi song was a version of Lata Mangeshkar’s Aayega aanewala in the Shabana Azmi-starrer Kadambari (1976), but her career as a playback singer began at least half a decade earlier.

“The first time I sang in a film was in Bengali (Shriman Prithviraj, 1971), and it was a duet with Lataji,” she says over a video conversation with. Krishnamurthy was just 16 at the time. “But so many years later, music continues to give me a great sense of purpose,” she says.