Jagjit Singh has been awarded by various people for his contribution to Indian music with postal stamps dedicated to the Ghazal King and has also been awarded the Padma Bhushan award in 2003. His heartwarming music has made millions believe that music truly can heal you. Whether the pain of lost love or the pain of a lost life, Jagjit Singh’s ghazals have always come in as a remedy and has shaped our life. Jagjit Singh was solely responsible for popularising ghazals in India and helped mend the broken heart. Born on February 8, 1941, the king of Ghazals has made us lose ourselves with his melodies. Chitra survives him.Ghazal in India has been synonymous with one mesmerizing singer, Jagjit Singh. He had been due to perform with a fellow ghazal singer, Ghulam Ali, at a concert in Mumbai, when he suffered a brain haemorrhage in September. Singh undertook his last tour of the UK earlier this year. Chitra's daughter Monica took her own life in 2009. Despite receiving public accolades, including the Padma Bhushan award in 2003, and delivering hit songs, he suffered from deep depression and his anguish was often evident in his live performances. Singh poured his grief into diverse solo projects that included religious songs. Chitra was so heartbroken that she gave up singing and retired from public life. In 1990 Vivek was killed in a road accident. I also introduced western instrumentation to make them livelier." Singh was also offered high-profile film projects and the couple became enormously wealthy. Singh said: "I was determined to polish up the genre and make it more acceptable to modern tastes, so chose simple poems and set them to simple tunes. They were invited to tour all over the world and followed it up by delivering successful albums together and as solo artists. At first they had only low-level success because ghazal music was a niche genre dominated by mainly Muslim artists, and Bollywood was ruling the musical roost.Įverything changed with the release of their 1976 album The Unforgettables, a surprise hit that turned the couple into overnight stars. They married in 1969, had a son, Vivek, and then teamed up to become a singing duo. Singh turned a corner when he met the unhappily married singer Chitra Dutta in 1967. Nevertheless, he continued to struggle and made money from singing advertising jingles. He took the drastic decision to shave off his beard, cut his hair and get rid of his turban. After doing a number of odd jobs Singh persuaded the record company HMV to cut a four-track EP later that year. He used the little savings he had to check into a dirty, rundown hostel. In March 1965 Singh took a decision that would change his life for ever when he boarded a train to Mumbai without telling his family. I soon realised that I would never understand science." "Although my father helped me train in my childhood, he wanted me to be an engineer. During his studies Singh sang for All India Radio, composed his first songs and started performing in stage shows. Singh attended Khalsa high school and Government college in Sri Ganganagar before graduating in arts from DAV College in Jalandhar and gaining a postgraduate degree in history from Kurukshetra University in Haryana. Singh's father sent him to learn classical Indian music from Pandit Chaganlal Sharma for two years and he studied with the respected maestro Ustad Jamaal Khan for a further six years. He was surrounded by music from an early age, performing Sikh devotional hymns at the local temple and imitating songs he heard on radio. Not long after the birth, his father, Amar, a government employee, rechristened him Jagjit, on the advice of a holy man. One of seven children, he was born Jagmohan Singh in the Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan, into a devout Sikh family. Affectionately known as the king of the ghazal, he spread the music around the world and made more than 50 albums over a 46-year long career. Although it has been the foundation for countless other genres across the centuries, this deeply poetic form of music finally reached the masses thanks to the Sikh maestro Jagjit Singh, who has died aged 70, after a brain haemorrhage. One of the oldest musical genres, the ghazal, originated in the Middle East in the sixth century before finding a permanent home in the Indian subcontinent in the 12th century.
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