"Difficult to sing 'Hawa Hawai' in one stretch": Kavita Krishnamurti recalls singing for Sridevi

In an exclusive interview with ANI, the veteran singer opened up on how she managed to record the Javed Akthar track with its fun-sounding lyrics like 'Pak chiki, laki chiki, chiki laki choom' all in one single take.

"Hawa Hawai was difficult for me at that time because I was a new singer and for me to sing a very naughty song, I didn't feel I had the acting ability to sing in that it did pose certain problems. And, you know, pak -chiki, laaki-chiki those to get them all correct in the mike Because, as I told you, it's one take," said the 66-year-old singer.

She said that she also found a couple of other songs, equally challenging.

"Those days we did six-minute songs at a stretch. You're talking about the 80s and 90s. Whole of 80s and early 90s. All my songs were done in one stretch. 'Hawa Hawaii' one stretch. 'Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja'. Even my most difficult songs all in one stretch. There was no dubbing facilities those days. If I made a mistake, the musicians have to play everything again for me. And I was a junior singer. And there were a lot of senior musicians there. So like everybody would look at their watch if I make a mistake.

"Poori iske liye phir se gaana bajao, that kind of a thing. So I had to, I'd literally be on my toes. How many times do i have to sing the lines and to be in 'sur' because there were no pitch correction machines. Alfaz (words) and expressions to be on point. So everything, the six minute song, one, two, three, four, it starts till the end you have to go," she said.

Two other songs that Kavita found difficult at that time were AR Rahman and Hariharan'song ''Tu Hi Re' and Salman Khan, Ajay Devgan, Aishwarya Rai starrer 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam's' title track.

Kavita said, "Tu Hi Re was fantastic. Little difficult for me. I told Rahman ji also. I said, aap ne toh mere ko z scale mein gavarahe hai. Rahman sings very high. So, you know, if you remember my lines in In Pyar Ki Raahon Mein, it's so high. I struggled. First two times I did it. Then actually his, Murti ji, his assistant and all, they all did the song. Then when Rahman walked in, he said, can you sing those two lines for me again? He very sweetly said, I think you can do this a little better, no? With a little less strain. And I said, hey, Bhajrangbali. And I started that song. I said, you know, ye toh bahut ooncha hai mere liya (this is too high for me.) But then still I said,, I had to do this song. I wanted to do it. Then I did it. By the way, third song was Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, the title song."

Apart from high-note difficulty, the singer shared how she battled with sinus.

"I'm always have a blocked nose. Hum, Sanam, all these words in a humming. How many battles I've... fought in my career with my sinus."

She also revealed how she takes the pitch so high in the songs.

"When you sing that high, sometimes when it's that high, it may not be a real voice. It might be your head voice.. So that transition from chest voice to head voice has to be very smooth. If it is not smooth, you will hear the strain. You will hear the strain in the voice, even if it's not a crack. You'll feel, when you listen to a singer, sometimes you feel, this is the highest note, ye singer isse oopar ja hee nahin sakate(this singer can't go higher than this.) That should never come in a song. You should feel the singer can sing higher than this. Ye toh bayen hath ka khel hai. That's a success of a easy, smooth singing.

Kavita also recalled how she was impressed with Shabana Azmi's acting skills in the song 'Badal Umad Ghumad'

"One song of Shabana Ji's song which I did for a film called 'Saaz'. I always do Sashtang Pranam to Shabana ji for that song. Badal UmadGhumad, it's a classical kind of song. She's a singer, professional singer and she's singing on stage. So when those little taans come, literally you see her veins. I don't know how she managed it. Every word, believe me, you see that and you know it's Shabana ji singing it, I have not sung that song.

"Her lip movement for any song is amazing. If you have you heard 'Mile Sur Mera Tumhara'? Aapko lagta hai ki maini gaaya? Aise Nahi lagta hai ki unhone khud gaaya? Her lip moment. She's too good. She's one artist who emotes every word that she sings."

Madhuri Dixit, said Kavita is among her favourites and she likes singing for the actor.

"Madhuri Dixit is so good. Her eyes speak, her lip, you know, like if you see Devdas, Maar Dala, the way she has expressed Maar dala, she's so good, no? She is so good. In Meraa piya ghar aaya, o raamji, all the songs for her, I really enjoyed singing. And another song which I thought she was terrific in was Kay Sera Sera. She was so good, her dancing...the movement. And even in that song, it's a high pitch. For me, it's low pitch. Shankar (Shankar Mahadevan) is touching the heaven in 'Kay Sera Sera' song but my lines were 'Pyar zindagi, pyar har'... So it was, for me, it's a very rare skill. You normally don't get to see so low."

Kavita, has sung in 45 different languages in her career including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Telugu, Odia, Marathi, English, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Nepali, Assamese, Konkani, Punjabi, and others.

She is the recipient of four Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer Awards (winning consecutively during 1995-1997), and the Padmashri which she received in 2005.

Her performance as a singer in R.D. Burman's '1942: A Love Story' earned her widespread recognition. Kavita established herself as a top female playback singer, with Alka Yagnik, with a string of songs beginning in 1942:A Love Story, Yaraana, Agni Sakshi, Bhairavi, and Khamoshi.

She later collaborated with Bappi Lahiri, Anand-Milind, A R Rahman, Rajesh Roshan, Raamlaxman, Ismail Darbar, Himesh Reshammiya, Aadesh Shrivastava, Nadeem-Shravan, Jatin-Lalit, Viju Shah, and Anu Malik, among others. Her collaborations with AR Rahman and Ismail Darbar have received widespread praise over the last two decades. (ANI)