Alka Yagnik
Alka Yagnik 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.
Alka is classically trained and began singing bhajans for Akashvani (All India Radio), Calcutta at the age of six. Her first song was for the film Payal Ki Jhankaar in (1980), followed by Laawaris (1981) with the song "Mere Angane Mein", followed by the film Hamari Bahu Alka (1982). She got her big break with the song "Ek Do Teen" from the film Tezaab (1988). The song won her a Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer.
She has sung in many languages other than Urdu-Hindi, including Gujarati, Avadhi, Odia, Assamese, Manipuri, Nepali, Rajasthani, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, English Malayalam except Kannada.
She has worked with Indian composers such as Kalyanji–Anandji, Rahul Dev Burman, Laxmikant–Pyarelal, Rajesh Roshan, Nadeem–Shravan, Jatin–Lalit, Anu Malik, A. R. Rahman, Anand–Milind, Himesh Reshammiya, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Ismail Darbar, Aadesh Shrivastava, Viju Shah, M. M. Keeravani, Sajid–Wajid, Bappi Lahiri, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Sandesh Shandilya and many others.
In a career spanning three decades she has sung many duet songs, most of these have been with Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, and She has also sung many duets with Abhijeet, Hariharan, Vinod Rathod, Sonu Nigam & Shaan .
She has also sung in many albums such as "Tum Yaad Aaye", as well as "Tum Aaye" and "Shairana" in which she worked in close collaboration with award-winning lyricist Javed Akhtar and singer Hariharan. She has also rendered the Hanuman Chalisa and various devotional songs.