'Computer games have taken precedence over poetry'

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Computer games have taken precedence over poetry

More than five years after his death, Jagjit Singh, The King of Ghazals, lives on in the hearts of his fans. Khalid Mohamed remembers excerpts from an interview where the maestro had bemoaned the degeneration of music and lyrics

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Published: Fri 2 Dec 2016, 11:00 AM

Last updated: Fri 2 Dec 2016, 1:00 PM

If it's a ghazal mehfil - of which there are hundreds in winter - you can be sure the memory of Jagjit Singh will be rekindled. His compositions, and the songs he lent his voice to in Bollywood, continue to be recorded in cover versions and performed as tributes at musical soirees.
In the genre of geets and ghazals, the royalties which his albums command to this day cannot be matched by any of his peers, be it Pankaj Udhas, Anup Jalota or Talat Aziz. And to think it has been almost five years since he passed away - at the age of 70, a somewhat broken man who could never reconcile to the loss of his son, Vivek, at the age of 20, in a road accident.
For a year after that tragic incident, he stopped recording. His wife, Chitra Singh, who often accompanied him on tracks of non-film albums, quit altogether. On his return to the fold, the king of ghazals - as he was justly called - performed at packed concerts in India and abroad. For Indians settled in the US, Europe and the UAE, his songs of love and loss evoked tears and bittersweet smiles.
Often, at open-air concerts, he would perform under the moonlight before a besweatered and shawl-enwrapped audience which would plead for encores till the early morning hours. Among his most in-demand renditions count Jeevan kya hai, Main roya pardes mein, Ishq kya hai, Main nashe mein hoon, Khuda humko aisi khudai na de and Dil tarasta hai. Of course, from his vast repertoire, you're likely to have your own unforgettable. His most-cherished film songs include Honthon se chhu lo tum (Prem Geet), Tum ko dekha toh yeh khayal (Saath Saath), Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho (Arth) and Hoshwalon ko khabar kya (Sarfarosh).  
However, he was clearly disenchanted with Bollywood which had typecast him as a playback singer of  melancholic songs. In the course of a candid interview, towards the autumn of his life, he had stated, "Films were never my core area of work. I don't sing as much for films nowadays because no one calls me to. If someone does, I screen the song for its lyrics and tune. If I like it, I do it."
Asked about his take on the state of film music, Jagjit Singh didn't mince his words, describing it as, "Horrendous, amelodic and bereft of any Indianness. The sound has turned completely western. Once in a while, I do hear a song which is melodic. But 90 per cent is horrible. Sometimes, AR Rahman and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy do a good job. I think there should be some kind of censorship on the kind of vulgar songs being churned out today."
Instead, he was more content in collaborating with lyricist-poet Gulzar on an album sourced from Sant Kabir's poems, besides ghazal and bhakti geet albums meant for music connoisseurs.
To establish himself as a ghazal singer wasn't a cakewalk either. "It took me 10 years to cut my first album, The Unforgettables, in the mid-1970s," he pointed out. "It took me another decade to prove my worth amidst the topmost singers then. Today, the scenario has changed so much. Superstars and supersingers are made overnight. But it has to be seen how long they will survive. Singers are media created, instant success cannot last long."
Once Jagjit Singh began talking, he didn't fight shy of frankspeak and elaborated, "I began when Mehdi Hassan was at the peak of his career. Ghulam Ali was doing very well. In film music, there were Talat Mahmood, Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar. For me, the need to survive and the pressure of asserting my own identity were always there. For years, I wasn't considered important enough to be invited to parties. But once I was honoured with the title of Padma Bhushan (in 2003) by the government, the invitations started pouring in. I was even called to be chief guest at the release of an album by Lata Mangeshkar."
Did he enjoy partying? "Why not?" he laughed. "It's fabulous 'time-pass'. There's good food, social chit chat and gorgeous women, all under the same roof. That makes for a nice evening, once in a while."
According to the king of ghazals, "Album sales should not be the only criterion to judge music. Sales figures are publicity gimmicks. Let's see which singers will survive over the decades in the business. Ghazals sell on their own merit, no one promotes them. Imagine the sales if they were promoted well!"
Vis-à-vis the widespread belief that ghazal is a dying form, he said, "It may seem to have a dark future because Urdu is not taught in most schools today. Computer games have taken precedence over poetry in all languages."
As the conversation ended, his parting lines were, "I can't help feeling that all the work I've done during my lifetime has been underrated. My advice to newcomers in the field of music would be: one, don't learn music, just pretend to know it; two, make the media your best friend. Publicity can make a nobody into a somebody."
As the winter chill sets in, the spirit of Jagjit Singh returns to revive the warmth for ghazal aficionados.  
(Khalid Mohamed is taking a break. Bollywood will return in a few weeks' time.)


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