Jagjit Singh, Who Popularized Eclectic Ghazal To Global Audience

Jagjit Singh, who with unique silent and powerful voice, rendered captivating emotions in highly appealing melodic ghazals, and popularized the format in Hindi Cinema, and to global audience, died on this day.

His high-base tempered voice echoed and stayed, unravelling emotions into ghazal form, and captivated the mass global audience, mainly Asians, while also creating his own club of connoisseurs. The format fitted best into mainstream Hindi cinema, earning him a title of Ghazal King, popularizing his unique style.

One could sip into his voice silently as words would dip into listeners’ emotions creating their own world, and he could go on building on that tempo in the concert. 

His was not crafted or subtle traditional Persian Urdu lyrics with shades of meaning in the rhyming verses, or highly eclectic classical Asian music, but simple yet powerful emotions that matched the humming phrases, and could easily identify with masses, elevating them to higher musical form, and in the process healing them in their pain.

He could pick up a sense of lost childhood nostalgia in the narrow lanes of one’s upbringing (who kagaj ki kashti), or lover’s agony on silent grief of a smiling partner (tum itana jo muskara rahe ho), or more recently how love can bring to magic to life (ishq kijiye fir samjhiye),

Those are commonplace themes and phrases, rendered through his voice, became unique creations. He’d be remembered for the pain of lost relations, love and of such many gentle emotions, that his deeply gripping voice and music found a healing touch for.