Filmfare Awardee Anupama Deshpande’s Swaraa Music Academy pays melodious tributes to Legends

The invited ‘live’ audience burst into a standing ovation-applause when eminent senior Bollywood playback-singer Anupama Deshpande sang her evergreen song ‘Humko, Aaj Kal Hai, Intezaar’ on stage last weekend - Chaitanya Padukone

It was her humble tribute to the fond memory of ‘late’ composer Bappi Lahiri . In fact, Bappi-da considered this tuneful track as among his timeless favorites.

Incidentally, even music-savvy, mega-star Madhuri Dixit was among the first to highly appreciate Anupama’s ‘playback’ voice picturised on her, in that Sailaab movie (1990) song.

The special occasion was the musical celebration ‘Swaranjali’ to mark the seventh anniversary of Anupama’s ‘Swaraa Music Academy’, which she runs successfully in active collaboration with her trained-singer daughter Deepa Deshpande.

The well-attended event which paid melodious tributes to musical legends, had some energetic dance-worthy ‘live’ song performances (also streamed live on Facebook and Instagram ) was held at Prabodhan Thackeray mini-auditorium in Mumbai.

Besides ‘sangeet-gurus’ Anupama and Deepa who also sang fabulously, the trained students included amazing singers comprising Vishnu Khedekar, Bhuvana Bisawa, Priya Weling, Dipti Pandit, Shailendra Dethe, , Dharmesh Dangarwala, , Urmila Sarkar. Neeta Arane, Varsha Prabhu, Sadhana Pawar, Jaya Kawle and Priti Shah. ‘Guest Singer-Performer’ Sridar Ramaswamy impressed the audience with his multiple lively duets sung with various co-singers.

The unassuming versatile singer Anupama who has won the prestigious Filmfare Award as the Best Female Playback Singer for her mellifluous song ‘Sohni Chenab De Kinare ’ from ‘Sohni Mahiwal’ (1984) gets emotional as she shares.

“Swaraa Music Academy is more like my 7-year old musical ‘kid-baby’ . My singer-daughter Deepa and I started it so that we could impart proper training in various aspects of correct singing.

Which includes singing-in-sync with rhythmic beats-tempo-- within one’s own vocal range, right expression and feel, breathing-control, singing on microphone, diction and many more aspects.

Interestingly, we have most of our 30 plus (age) adults-students who are busy medical-doctors by profession. We even have a few trained singers from the defense forces and also enthusiastic house-wives.

Diligently getting trained by us and then performing Hindi film songs serves as a ‘stress-buster’ especially for the Doctors.

After being fully groomed, they are able to showcase their hidden musical talents ,” explains Anupama, who is also formally trained in classical music Curiously enough, she started off as a popular ‘live’ orchestra singer and then turned into a proficient ‘dubbing’ singer whose tracks were often retained for the final sound-track version, on sheer merit.

Eventually, she was taken on directly for various final playback songs. Recalls Anupama, “Even when I was asked to record as a singer-artiste whose tracks later on would be ‘dubbed’ by one of the famous top-ranking singers, I would still sing every such song with absolute sincerity and to the best of my vocal talent ability..

Every prominent music-director who worked with me including Laxmikant-jee, Bappi-da, Anu Malik-jee , Uttam-jee Singh, Rajesh Roshan-jee and Sajid-Wajid and even legendary genius singer Kishore-da Kumar had full faith and confidence in my diligent singing calibre.

There is this popular duet song ‘O Yaara, Tu Pyaron Se Hai Pyara’ in 1987 movie ‘Kaash’ with Kishore Kumar—(he would fondly call me ‘Anu’) where Kishore-da insisted that my voice should be retained in the final sound-track and director Mahesh Bhatt-saab also agreed,” recalls Anupama who has to her credit over 125 songs and has also sung in Marathi, Gujarati , Bengali and Bhojpuri languages.

“ For me, dignified Lata Mangeshkar-Didi, clad in her white saree, with her divine aura and legacy of immortal songs is a human avataar of Maa Saraswati-devi and an inspiring ‘university-of-music’,” enthuses Anupama offering her heartfelt tribute.

( The writer of this article Chaitanya Padukone is a Dadasaheb Phalke Academy award-winning eminent senior film-& film-music journalist & author of the memoirs book R D BurMania).