Hemant Kumar is a Bollywood legend, renowned for his work as an award-winning playback singer and Indian music director. He was born as "Hemanta Mukhopadhyay" on June 16, 1920, in Varanasi, India. Released in 1940, the Bengali film Rajkumarer Nirbbasan marked his debut as a composer, while 1947's Abhiyatri found him working as a music director for the first time. By the mid-1950s, he was composing music for multiple films each year, as well as appearing in an equal number of films as a playback singer. In 1956, he received the Filmfare Best Music Director Award for Nagin, which was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1954. Thanks for classic songs like "Jane Woh Kaise Log The," Kumar received the BFJA Best Music Director Award in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1967, and 1968, then won the National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer in 1971 for his performance in Nimantran. After making his American film debut with 1972's Siddhartha, which featured both his compositions and vocal performances, he won the BFJA Best Male Playback Singer Award multiple times throughout the 1970s, including 1972, 1975, and 1976. Kumar continued to win awards for his singing and songwriting skills well into the 1980s. Additionally, he was offered the Padmi Shri in 1970 and the Padma Bhushan in 1987 — two highly-coveted civilian awards that he refused to accept — and received India's most prestigious artistic honor, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, in 1986. Following a concert performance on September 26, 1989, he went into cardiac arrest and died at 69 years old.
