What makes a Lata Mangeshkar — a majestic voice as well as with a perfect dental structure.
“A melodious voice alone cannot make one a good singer. One needs to have a perfect dental structure, in addition to a good voice, to achieve excellence in vocal music,” a research by a dentist here says.
All the singing legends of India like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Anuradha Paudwal, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Mahendra Kapoor, have been gifted with both, and lack of either of them would not have made them successful singers, Raipur-based dentist Dr Anil Khakharia, who is currently doing his Ph.D. on the thesis titled “Voice change due to facial and dental structure on singing”, told this newspaper in an exclusive interview here on Sunday.
According to him, the structure of the vocal organs involves larynx (the expanded upper end of the windpipe), vocal chords, cartridge, facial muscles, tongue, teeth and lips.
While oral cavity plays a vital role in production of sounds, the teeth play a major role in articulation and delivery of sounds.
The research by him has found that persons, whose teeth face internally, usually produce soft and sweet voice when they sing. In medical term, such dental set up is called deep bite structure, in which case there is a little or no gap between teeth line, when the upper and lower teeth lines meet.
Some of the famous singers as Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Anuradha Paudwal, belong to this category and have soft and sweet voice.
Similarly, the persons, whose upper and lower jaw lines face externally, always sing on high pitch. Mahendra Kapoor and Kavita Krishnamurty fall in this category. Such people usually makes good classical singers.
Persons, who belong to normal bite category, maintain a good voice quality as long as they practice vocal music and suffer deterioration of voice when they stop singing.
“I have studied dental structures of some of the famous singers of the country during their live concerts before reaching the conclusion,” he added.
Dr Khakaria completed his Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) degree from Government Dental College at Indore in Madhya Pradesh in 1985. A Ghazal singer himself, the practising surgeon had later joined the famous India Gandhi Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya at Khairagarh in Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district to complete his M.Mus. (Master in Music).
He has been enrolled in the university as a Ph.D. student in 2010 and is working on his thesis under the guidance of Dr Unni Krishna, Prof. and head of department (HoD), vocal music, in the same institution.