Jagjeet singh ghazals full#

Petrol, diesel prices today: Rates static on 18 January, check here what you need to pay in your city Jagjit SinghвЂ™s music will remain eternally preserved on CDs, iPods and YouTube. What they wonвЂ™t say is songs mark time because our memories are made of songs, even the most non-musical of us.В As the clichГ© goes a singer never dies. The obituaries will talk about his hits, his awards, his accomplishments. The make-believe of Jagjit Singh was always in the music. It didnвЂ™t matter that his Ghazals always sounded the same whether it was the soundtrack for a modern collapsing marriage like Arth or a period piece like Mirza Ghalib. With films like Arth and Saath Saath, he was suddenly the thinking actorвЂ™s singing voice, a different kind of singer for a different kind of film.

Jagjeet singh ghazals full#

Ironically that success led him back full circle to Bollywood.

At a time when musical success meant Bollywood playback, he made his mark in a genre that was struggling to stay alive вЂ“ Ghazals. He remade himself, losing his turban and hair. His parents wanted him to become an IAS officer but he struggled to find a footing in music, singing for Jalandhar All India Radio. Now with his death, as we scan the obituaries we learn more about the effort it took for him to sound so effortless. Singh said in an interview вЂњOne should learn music for 15 years before actually trying their hand at singing Ghazals.'В Perhaps itвЂ™s not his fault that he made it sound so effortless, that every two-bit singer decided they could churn out their own Ghazal album. But he seemed a lonely man singing by himself.Д«ut he was always a serious singer. He even looked to reinvent himself by taking on more socially relevant songs in Cry for Cry and Mirage. Jagjit Singh soldiered on, falling back on his Punjabi roots with Sikh gurbani. ThatвЂ™s why their 18-year-old sonвЂ™s death in 1990 was a double tragedy. In their heyday they epitomised a silken Bollywoodish idea of romance that kept going on and on through the 70s and 80s. They were a package, a Ghazal come to life. Critics could raise their eyebrows about her voice and technique but it didnвЂ™t matter. Young couples loved to go to their concert because there was something fairy tale about hearing this young real-life couple singing A hista ahista or Hothon se choo lo tum to each other. They became the first enormously successful husband-wife singing duo who really sold us on the romance of the Ghazal. Jagjit and Chitra were the First Couple of that love story. Instead it lulled us, seduced us with its pop version of high Urdu romance. It ceased to surprise or make us think or push us into new musical frontiers. Ghazal went pop and his вЂњgolden voiceвЂќ became a sort of emotional salve for millions. It turned Ghazal into something of a mass-market money-spinning commodity that would become the stuff of jingles and Archies cards. The Prime Minister mourned the passing of SinghвЂ™s вЂњgolden voice.вЂќ But that golden voice was also his Midas touch. He was a king in a more commercial sense. But he was not quite Ghazal royalty like a Ghulam Ali or Mehdi Hasan. Now with his death, his Ghazal King title is being splashed across the headlines as a sort of badge of honour, his crowing glory. It probably didnвЂ™t hurt that a time when Pakistani singers held the authenticity card as far as Ghazals went, Singh was a Sikh from Ganganagar, Rajasthan. You could disparage it as Ghazal for Dummies but it was a huge secret relief to millions who had always felt shairi-outsiders. Jagjit Singh made the Ghazal mass-market whether you were in Chennai or Kolkata or Patiala.

We just didnвЂ™t understand enough, we watched the waah-waahs from afar and felt too intimidated to even admit how little we understood.

He was a sort of elixir in an audio-cassette, a bit of a guilty pleasure.ДЇor many of us, growing up far away from the decaying splendour of Lucknow, Urdu poetry was a rarefied art form to be admired but not absorbed. And the rest of us could hum along and pretend that time was not passing us by. It seemed like he could croon Patta Patta Boota Boota forever. And the shock of his death at 70 is really that he was 70. Make that the Jagjit Singh experience вЂ“ silken, soothing, heartfelt, almost evergreen. But Jagjit Singh gave us the Jagjit Singh sound. We reproduce it on theВ occasionВ of his 72nd birth anniversary.Д®very Indian of a certain age probably has a Jagjit Singh album stashed away somewhere. Editors note: This article was originally published in October 2011 after the death of Indian ghazal king Jasjit Singh.