Jagjit Singh: A singer for all ages

Daily Times

Last week, the legendary ‘Ghazal King’, Jagjit Singh, died at the age of 70 across the border in India. Having being hospitalised after suffering a brain hemorrhage, he breathed his last at the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai.

Jagjit spent decades entertaining music lovers across the world and had a wide fan following in Pakistan. Born on February 8, 1941, he was a singer, composer, activist and entrepreneur. He sung in several languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Nepali. Several bureaucrats, politicians, students, artists and people from all walks of life appreciate his ghazals and have been deeply grieved by his demise.

Jagjit’s fans say that his voice has a certain stability that is rare among ghazal singers, and the world will always remember him. Considered the pioneers of modern ghazal singing, Jagjit Singh and his wife Chitra Singh recorded a number of hits that are matchless in composition and melody. There are millions around the globe that enjoy listening to his ghazals, and his listeners included people of all ages.

“Artists respect their fans because listening to a song or a ghazal itself means that the listener is paying tribute to the singer,” a bureaucrat, who requested anonymity, told Daily Times. I enjoy his ghazals whenever I have time, most of which are hits from the 80s and 90s,” he said, adding, “Such material is hard to find these days.”

Jagjit’s music became popular in mass media through films such as ‘Prem Geet’, ‘Arth’ and ‘Saath Saath’, and TV serials ‘Mirza Ghalib’, and Kahkashan. He is considered to be the most popular ghazal singer and composer of all time in terms of commercial success. With a career spanning five decades and comprising 80 albums, the range and breadth of his work has been regarded as genre-defining.

In the 90s, Singh and his wife were struck by grief when their only son, Vivek, died in a road accident at the age of 19. He accidentally drove into a stationary truck, the impact of the crash killing him. Released after their son’s death, the duo’s album ‘Someone Somewhere’ was the with ghazals sung by both, after which Chitra Singh quit singing.

Jagjit would often sing “Mitti Da Bawa”, which was originally sung by Chitra in a Punjabi film, which relates to his own story of losing a loved one at a young age. Experienced artists and musicians often say that grief is the essential element to bring out an original art piece. And it is grief that every listener relates to subconsciously, whether it is in the form of a painting, poem or a music track.