By  Shahzeb Shaikh

Till I started talking to other singers and commoners about Ghazal King Jagjit Singh, I was under the impression that as a school-going girl, I was the only one who had fallen in love with his dulcet voice the first time I heard Baat nikalegi to phir duur talak jayegi… way back in the 1970s. I was wrong.

“I understood what a song with a soul sounds when I heard Jagjitji for the first time. Simple tune: Baat nikalegi to phir duur talak jayegi, but what profound meaning his voice gave it to it. I had already started my career as a singer but after I heard him, I knew I had to put a heart to it to lift the lyrics of the ghazals to that top notch level,” said singer and composer Roop Kumar Rathod.

Remembering their more than two decades of association, Rathod had got Jagjit to sing Phool khila de shakhoon par under his music direction for the film Life Express (2010). “I knew what songs would suit Jagjitji so had composed accordingly. But when he sang he added his own touch and it turned out to be one of the beautiful songs of the film,’’ remembered Rathod.

Pankaj Udhas another ghazal singer from Mumbai recalled when as a 16-year-old for the first time he heard Jagjit Singh. “It was at the concert of my elder brother Manhar Udhas. Before the interval, someone requested Bhai Jaan to allow a young boy to sing two ghazals. We were in the green room when a young Jagjit started singing Dil ki jaan se uthata hain originally sung by Mehdi Hasan Saheb. We were riveted to the voice and our association started from then.”

Recalling further, he said that as they both used to stay on Warden Road in Mumbai, Udhas used to drop in unannounced at Jagjit’s place. “He never complained. In fact if he was composing a new song, he would make me listen to it. Once I was going abroad and needed to learn a Punjabi folk song to woo the audience in the UK. He taught me without any hesitation,” recalled Udhas in a choked voice as he had just returned from Jagjit’s cremation ceremony.

Hindustani classical and ghazal singer Sunali Rathod said, “My association with Jagjitji went back to when I was 13-years-old and was performing at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Mumbai. He too performed at the same function and later he came over to my parents’ home and our association grew. Together with Roopji and Hariharanji, we recently brought out an album titled Hasratein.

In the US for a concert, Anup Jalota could hardly control his emotions while talking about Jagjit Singh. “Just last month we had performed together in two concerts in Dehradoon. Even a day before he was admitted in a hospital, and we had a long talk about our concerts and had discussed future plans. There was no sign of him being seriously ill,” he said.

Even for Jalota’s film, Maalik Aik, Jagjit had sung Saare jagat mein dooja nahin, mera tu ek sai, which has become a very popular bhajan in India.On a performing tour in Canada, his protégé Talat Aziz couldn’t believe that Jagjit is no more. “He was a pioneer because he broadened the base for ghazal, took it to lay music lovers. He did this by bringing in western instruments such as the guitar, introducing instrumental interludes, experimenting with non-traditional rhythm patterns and simplifying the tunes to make them very melodic,” said Aziz, who was mentored by Singh back in the late ’70s. He had composed Aziz’s first album, Jagjit Presents Talat.

Summing up everyone’s agony, Aziz said, “Jagjit Singh’s passing away is a great loss to the music world, and especially to the ghazal world. As a legend passes away but his legacy lives on, similarly an era has ended but Jagjit’s contribution to ghazal will live on forever.” — Surekha Kadapa-Bose

 

[The Dawn::  October 16, 2011