The Ghazal Maestro - Jagjit Singh08/02/2013
Today is ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh's 72nd birthday and Google doodle is celebrating the fact in style. Google has splashed Jagjit Singh's picture across its omnipresent search page.
Jagjit Singh, aka Jagmohan Singh was born in Rajasthan, but with father's encouragement shifted to Bombay to ply his trade and thereby for ever changed the way Indians look at music and the entertainment music that mostly, till then, was engrossed in kitsch love songs by Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar troika's Bollywood offering. Jagjit Singh breathed fresh air into the genre with his melodious and soothing voice that took the middle and late seventies and much of the next two decades by storm. Jagjit Singh was born on 8 February 1941 in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, India. His birth name was Jagmohan but this was changed to Jagjit after his parents sought the advice of a member of the Sikh Namdhari sect. Educated initially at Khalsa High School and Sri Ganganagar Government College, Singh obtained an arts degree from DAV College at Abohar and then a post-graduate degree in history from Kurukshetra University in Haryana. Throughout this time, Singh learned music in Sikh temples and from musicians such as Pandit Chaganlal Sharma and Ustad Jamaal Khan. In March 1965, Singh moved to Mumbai. He obtained work initially as a singer of advertising jingles and later progressed to playback singing. In the same year he persuaded the record company HMV to produce an EP; he also altered his Sikh image by abandoning his turban, shaving and cutting his hair. There he met Chitra Dutta. She divorced her husband and married Singh in December 1969. Following the birth of their son, Vivek, the couple performed as a singing duo but it was not until the release of the album The Unforgettables that they found significant, and surprising, success. It was an unconventional recording and it turned them into stars. The joint projects ceased in 1990 when their 18-year-old son, Vivek, was killed in a road accident. Chitra felt unable to sing following these events. Monica, Chitra's daughter from her first marriage, committed suicide in 2009. Although Jagjit continued to work and to have success after Chitra withdrew from public life he, too, was affected by the death of Vivek. Singh toured the UK in 2012 and was due to perform with Ghulam Ali in Mumbai but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on 23 September 2012. He was in a coma for over two weeks and died on 10 October 2012 at Lilavati Hospital, in Mumbai. The ‘Ghazal King’ is credited for the revival and popularity of ghazal, an Indian classical art form, by choosing poetry that was relevant to the masses and composing them in a way that laid more emphasis on the meaning of words and melody evoked by them. Jagjit Singh is considered to be the most successful ghazal singer and composer of all time in terms of critical acclaim and commercial success. With a career spanning five decades and a repertoire comprising over 80 albums, the range and breadth of his work has been regarded as genre-defining. He is the only composer and singer to have composed and recorded songs written by Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the government of India in 2003. In 1998, Jagjit Singh was awarded Sahitya Academy Award, a literary honor in India. He was awarded for popularizing the work of Mirza Ghalib. Reference: Wikipedia, Indian Express
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