A tribute to Kishore Kumar (4 August 1929 to 13 October 1987) on his 30th death anniversary
A later version of an operating system is considered superior to its earlier version. That is, ‘Windows 1o’ is superior to ‘Windows 8’, which is superior to ‘Windows 7’, and so on. However, that is not true for music. A singer or a music director’s career follows an inverted U-curve. After progressively rising to the peak, there is a plateau and, thereafter, there is decline. Kishore Kumar must be the only exception to this law. After 20 years of singing career starting from his debut in 1948, post-Aradhana (1969) his career zoomed to a higher trajectory, reaching another peak when he became the pole star of male playback singing. I have metaphorically said Kishore Kumar became the new Rafi in my post titled Mohammad Rafi versus Kishore Kumar, which specifically addressed how an era changed after Aaradhana. Kishore Kumar 2.0 (i.e. post-1969) sang about four times more songs than his previous two decades’ career, i.e. Kishore Kumar 1.0.
