Early Life
Jagjit was born on 8th Feb 1941 in Sriganganagar,
Rajasthan. Actually named Jagmohan at birth, his devout Sikh father gave him a
new name, rightly so Jagjit on the advice of his guru. Jagjit's early years
were spent in Bikaner, where his father was posted as a public works department
employee.
On returning to his
birthplace in 1948, Jagjit's father got him to train under a blind teacher,
Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma, and later, under Ustad Jamal Khan of the Senia
gharaana (a school of traditional Hindustani music). Still a child, Jagjit sang
shabads (devotional Sikh hymns) in Gurdwaras and processions on birthdays of
the Sikh gurus. "From that time, I had a taste for lyrics with the melancholy
flavor of parting and separation."
Jagjit's first public performance came
in the ninth grade. "When I sang there was great excitement! Some gave me
five rupees, some two, and called out their encouragement." .There was no
looking back after that.
At college in Sriganganagar, he sang one night in front of
4,000 people. Suddenly, the electricity went off and the entire arena was
plunged into darkness. The sound system was battery-operated and remained live.
"I went on singing, nobody moved, nothing stirred ... such incidents and
the response from audiences convinced me that I should concentrate on
music."
Jagjit listened intently to classical singers of that time on radio - Talat
Mehmood, Abdul Karim Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan et al. Being fond of
Urdu poetry, Jagjit developed a preference for bol-pradaan music, where
emphasis is on words and expression rather than the instruments.
Jagjit chose DAV College India ,
Rajendra Prasad.
Inter-university music competitions required his college to send one nominee
for classical and one nominee for light music, and since an established senior
student already occupied the classical music berth, Jagjit shifted to Geet and
Ghazal and won trophy after trophy, "Slowly, I started acquiring fans who
would ask for specific song requests ... often a 100 rupee note would be lovingly
pressed into my hand."
Hurdles and Hardships
In 1961, Jagjit went to Bombay to scout out prospects for a career in
film playback singing. Music director Jaikishen liked his voice but could not
offer any big break. Money ran out and a dispirited Jagjit did not have enough
to even retrieve his clothes from the laundry or buy a ticket home. "I
traveled by train from Bombay
to Jalandhar minus a ticket, hiding in the bathroom."
In March 1965, Jagjit decided to have another go at the celluloid singing in Bombay . He lived in a
run-down hostel, sleeping on an iron cot surrounded by bedbugs and getting his
foot chewed off by rats at night. He was financially in a precarious situation.
"Sometimes there was money and sometimes there wasn't." But such was the
purity and attraction of Jagjit's voice that he managed to get two Ghazals
recorded for an EP (Extended Play, a 1960s gramophone record format) with HMV.
When the time came to take a picture for the cover of the album, Jagjit decided
to cut his long Sikh turban and hair, reasoning, "It was a matter of
identity ... whatever picture was taken, that was how I would have to remain
for the rest of my career."
Life in Bombay
was hard and Jagjit eked out a living doing small mehfils (musical gatherings)
and house concerts. He sang at numerous film parties in the hope that a music
director might notice him and give him a chance. But filmdom was run in cliques
and newcomers were rarely accepted in a highly competitive environment.
Besides, as his brother Kartar Singh recalled, "The musicality of his
voice, its depth, its pain, how would it suit a hero who runs around
trees?". His strong composition skills and conjurer-like control over
words, ragas and tunes would have simply been lost had he remained stuck in film
playbacks.
Jagjit increasingly veered toward the Ghazal. Bollywood's loss was the Ghazal's
gain, for those were the times when Ghazal music was turning into a forgotten
and dying art. The Urdu language itself was in decline in India . Jagjit made the Ghazal his
beloved and changed its destiny. Jagjit Singh was successful because he
developed his own style and didn't try to be like film singers. He was
different from them, several notches above.
In an era when the Ghazal had yet to emerge out of the confines of aristocratic
seances to become marketable, Jagjit composed music for radio jingles, ad
films, documentaries, etc to earn an income. It was at one such jingle
recording that he met Chitra, who was at the tether end of a bad marriage.She divorced her husband and married Jagjit Singh in December in 1969.Her
daughter, Monica, remembered hearing Jagjit sing the Punjabi folk song,
"Maye-ni-Maye" at a neighbors's home: "As a little kid, I was so
moved by that song, I just sat down and wept ... it was the purity and intensity
of his voice that touched me."
Jagjit's album recordings were excruciatingly slow in the late 1960s. Between
1965 and 1973, he had three solo EPs, two duet EPs with Chitra, and one
"SuperSeven" (a 20-minute format that has disappeared). Most earnings
came from live performances at parties and weddings. On one occasion, he was
invited to Hong Kong to sing at a marriage and
the Hilton Hotel "asked me to perform for half-an-hour each day in return
for a room and food - no money." In 1969, Jagjit and Chitra also went to East Africa along with an orchestra troupe of light music
singers. In 1970, "for the grand sum of 30 rupees", the two got
married. "No drama, no reception, no presents. Just two minutes and we
were man and wife."
Vivek, alias Baboo, was born in 1971. When Baboo was brought home from the
hospital, "we had very little money, our apartment had just one room ...
but there was joy, such joy." To tide over financial hardships, Chitra
used to literally hold the sleeping 20-day-old baby in her arms while singing
jingles into the mike. Despite the straitened conditions, Jagjit fondly recalls
those times: "I felt as if I was the richest man in the world."
Rising of the King
In 1975, HMV asked Jagjit to compose his first ever LP (Long-Play) album, a signal that he had finally arrived on the scene. "The Unforgettables" featured Jagjit-Chitra Ghazals that sounded totally different from orthodox Ghazals. Modern instruments rubbed shoulders with traditional sarangi and tabla. Jagjit's trademark belief that Ghazal must not be imprisoned in one rigid style raised critics' eyebrows, but as the album grew into a hit beyond expectations, the self-same critics hailed Jagjit for this foresight and innovation."Unforgettables" brought Jagjit and Chitra Singh to national attention and helped finance the purchase of their modest flat in
The next album Jagjit recorded was the Punjabi "Birha Da Sultan",
poems of Shiv Kumar Batalvi. Jagjit's interpretation and mellifluous rendering
of Batalvi's sad verses haunted listeners for decades. A quarter of a century
after the album was released, hit numbers like "Shikra" (where the
beloved is compared to the falcon who won't eat what is offered and "so, I
fed it the flesh of my heart") are requested at Jagjit's live concerts.
After "Birha Da Sultan", Jagjit and Chitra composed and sang the
first-ever double album, "Come Alive", sparking a Ghazal hunger that
was unprecedented in South Asia . "Live at
Wembley" and "Live at Royal Albert Hall", two more double albums
recorded in concert, came out after Jagjit toured England in 1979 and 1982. On the
latter trip, two performances in London
were scheduled for two consecutive nights in venues with seating capacity of
6,000. Tickets sold out in three hours.
In 1980, Jagjit agreed to sing Javed Akhtar's poetry for a low-budget film,
"Saath Saath", without bothering for financial rewards. Raman Kumar,
the director, could not spend much at the recording studio, but Jagjit footed
the bills. A similar movie venture, "Arth", in the same year saw Jagjit
and Chitra Singh's popularity climb higher and higher. Even now,
"Arth" and "Saath Saath" are one of HMV's highest selling
combination cassettes ever.
In 1987, Jagjit crossed another milestone by recording the first purely digital
CD album by an Indian musician, "Beyond Time". It was a memorable
moment not just for Chitra and him, but for Ghazals as a whole. The year after,
Jagjit sealed his name in history by composing the music for Gulzar's epic TV
serial, "Mirza Ghalib". Jagjit's soft and serenading voice paid
befitting tribute to the greatest 19th century poet of undivided India .
Despair
In 1990, Jagjit and Chitra lost their 18-year-old only son, Vivek, in a motor accident. It was a moment of pure desperation and the biggest tragedy in their lives. Chitra lost her voice and never returned to the stage or to the recording studio. Jagjit groped in darkness and depression for a while, but such were his steely character and dedication to music that he decided "not to let what has happened become a weakness to crush me, instead I should turn it into a strength". He began picking up the scrambled pieces by playing the tanpura as a form of meditation. "After Baboo's death, my focus sharpened and I concentrated entirely on singing and composing."
The first album after his son's demise, "Man Jite Jagjit", contained
Sikh devotional Gurbani, where "you'll hear the pain ... my mood of
acceptance [of fate]". Work did not stop even after the devastating loss,
though fans could no longer hear Jagjit's famous duets with Chitra.
"Someone Somewhere", "Hope", "Kahkashan",
"Visions", "Face to Face", "Silsilay",
"Marasim", "Forget me Not" and so on reached a global
audience. "Sajda" (1991) with the nightingale of India , Lata Mangeshkar, smashed
non-film album records of all time. The caravan has not stopped to this day.
The very day his mother died in 2001, after the cremation in the morning,
Jagjit went to Calcutta
in the afternoon for a scheduled concert.
After Vivek's death, Jagjit began showing more of his spiritual and philosophical side, mellowing his already sobering voice, singing complicated metaphysical verses and also venturing into classical bhajans (Hindu devotional songs). When poet and associate, Nida Fazli, sees the sonless father figure Jagjit with legions of his youthful fans, "it seems as if he has hundreds and thousands of children who shower love on him".
End of an Era
10th Oct 2011 became
one of the saddest days of my live. I was in office when I got the news that
the Legend has left for the concert in heaven and will never sing for us know.I was in Mumbai where his funeral
was carried but didn’t have the courage to attend it. I was a moment of tremendous
sadness for all his fans. All the TV channels were playing his song and paying
him a tribute for his contributions to Ghazal Gayaki. He was in a coma for over
two weeks and died on 10 October 2011 at Lilavati
Hospital, in Mumbai.
Uthke mehfil se mat chale jaana,
tum se roshan ye kona kona hain
(Do not ever get up and leave this heart;
it is you who light every corner of it) .
Yes.
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