Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar celebrates 79th birthday

Mumbai, Sep 28 (UNI) The ''Nightingale'' of Bollywood and Bharat Ratna recepient Lata Mangeshkar today celebrated her 79th birthday with her family in Pune.

The melody queen has never celebrated her birthday in a lavish way, preferring to stay indoors and carry on with her daily chores.

Though Lata generally maintains a low profile, she still continues to lend her voice to many a filmstars and was last heard in Vikram Bhatt's ''1920'', where she shared playback credits with Pandit Jasraj and Asha Bhosale.

Born on September 28, 1929, in a family of musicians, Lata started her career in the music arena 66 years ago. She got a wide recognition for her song ''Aayega Aanewala'' in the film ''Mahal'' and then never looked back. From light classical music to film songs and from ghazals to bhajans and pop, she has sung a variety of numbers. Having worked with almost all top music composers and singers in the industry, Lata has sung more than 30,000 songs in over 20 Indian languages.

The singer even featured in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1974 to 1991 for having made the most recordings in the world.

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