Music

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence. The common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics (loudness and softness), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture (which are sometimes termed the "color" of a musical sound). Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and with vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping, and there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses"). In its most general form, the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music (songs, tunes, symphonies, and so on), the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic examination of music. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."

Kumar Sanu

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Kedarnath Bhattacharya, better known as Kumar Sanu (born 20 October 1957), is a legendary Indian singer. Kumar Sanu is one of the most popular playback singers of Bollywood. He holds the Guinness Book world record for recording the maximum number of songs in a day, which are 28, in the year 1993...He is noted for his contributions as a playback singer in Bollywood. He was awarded the Filmfare Best Male Playback Singer Award for five consecutive years. In 2009, the Government of India awarded him Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, in recognition of his achievements.

Early life

Kumar Sanu's father, Pashupati Bhattacharya, was a vocalist and composer. He along with Sanu, and Sanu's elder sister lived in Sinthee area (Dumdum, Kolkata) near Biswanath Park. Sanu's father Pashupati Bhattacharya was a very famous singer and he trained Sanu as a singer and tabla player. After getting a degree in commerce from Calcutta University, Sanu began performing in 1979, singing at shows and restaurants around Calcutta. He tried to model his singing style after Bollywood singer Kishore Kumar.

Song

A song is a single (and often standalone) work of music intended to be sung by the human voice with distinct and fixed pitches and patterns using sound and silence and a variety of forms that often include the repetition of sections. Written words created specifically for music or for which music is specifically created, are called lyrics. If a pre-existing poem is set to composed music in classical music it is an art song. Songs that are sung on repeated pitches without distinct contours and patterns that rise and fall are called chants. Songs in a simple style that are learned informally are often referred to as folk songs. Songs that are composed for professional singers are called popular songs. These songs, which have broad appeal, are often composed by professional songwriters, composers and lyricists. Art songs are composed by trained classical composers for concert performances. Songs are performed live and recorded. Songs may also appear in plays, musical theatre, stage shows of any form, and within operas.

Bollywood

Bollywood is the sobriquet for the Hindi language film industry, based in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, the second most populous state of the Republic of India. The term is often incorrectly used as a synecdoche to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; however, it is only a part of the large Indian film industry, which includes other production centres producing films in many languages.

Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in India, representing 43% of net box office revenue, while Telugu cinema, and Tamil cinema representing 36%, and rest of the regional cinema constitutes 21% as of 2014, bollywood is also one of the largest centers of film production in the world. It is more formally referred to as Hindi cinema. Bollywood is classified as the biggest movie industry in the world in terms of amount of people employed and number of films produced. In just 2011 alone, over 3.5 billion tickets were sold across the globe which in comparison is 900,000 tickets more than Hollywood. Also in comparison, Bollywood makes approximately 1,041 films yearly, as opposed to less than 500 films made by Hollywood yearly.

Alka Yagnik

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Alka Yagnik (Hindi: अलका याज्ञनिक, Bengali: অলকা ইয়াগনিক) is an Indian playback singer. She is noted in Hindi cinema with a career spanning over three decades. She is a record seven-time winner from a record of 36 nominations of the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer, a two-time recipient of the National Film Award as well as several other music awards & honours. Further, as many as 20 of her tracks feature in BBC's "Top 40 Bollywood Soundtracks of all time" review.

Early life and background

Alka Yagnik was born in Kolkata on 20 March 1966, to Gujarati Hindu Parents. Her mother Shubha Yagnik was a singer of Indian classical music. She did her schooling from Modern High School for Girls. In 1972 at the age of six, she started singing for Akashvani (All India Radio), Calcutta. At age 10, her mother brought her to Mumbai as a child singer. She was advised to wait until her voice matured, but her mother remained determined. On a subsequent visit, Alka got a letter of introduction to Raj Kapoor from his Kolkata distributor. Kapoor heard the girl and sent her with a letter to noted music director Laxmikant. Impressed, Laxmikant gave her two alternatives – an immediate start as a dubbing artist or a later break as a singer; Shubha chose the latter for her daughter.