The Ageless Music of JAGJIT SINGH

Early life and career

Jagjit Singh was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan to Amar Singh Dhiman, a government employee, a native of Dalla village in Punjab and his mother, Bachan Kaur from Ottallan village, Samrala. He had four sisters and two brothers and he was known as Jeet by his family. He was raised as a Sikh by religion. He went to Khalsa High School in Sri Ganganagar and then studied science after matriculation at Government College, Sri Ganganagar and went onto graduate in Arts at DAV College, Jalandhar. He is a post-graduate in history from Kurukshetra University in Haryana. Although his late father always wanted him to pursue IAS as a career, he took immense pride in his son`s achievements in the world of music today.

His association with music goes back to his childhood. He learnt music under Pandit Chaganlal Sharma for two years in Ganganagar, and later devoted six years to learning Khayal, Thumri and Dhrupad forms of Indian Classical Music from Ustad Jamaal Khan of the Sainia Gharana school. Popularly known as "Ghazal King", Singh gained acclaim together with his wife, singer Chitra Singh. Chitra stopped giving public performances after their only son, Vivek, died in a road accident in 1990. But Singh continued to sing, singing with equal ease in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujrati, Sindhi and Nepali languages. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2003.

The Vice-Chancellor of Panjab University and Kurukshetra University, Late Professor Suraj Bhan encouraged his interest in music. He arrived in Mumbai in 1965 in search of better opportunities for being a musician and singer. His early struggle in the music industry, though not too harsh by his own account, still had its share of trials and tribulations. He lived as a paying guest and his earlier assignments were singing advertisement jingles. Singh was first offered to sing in a Gujarati film, Dharati Na Chhoru produced by Suresh Amin.

During 1970s, the art of ghazal singing was dominated by well-established names like Noor Jehan, Malika Pukhraj, Begum Akhtar, Talat Mahmood and Mehdi Hassan. However, Singh was able to make his mark and carve out a niche for himself. In 1976, his album The Unforgetables (On HMV LP Records) hit music stores. Essentially a ghazal album, its emphasis on melody and Jagjit's fresh voice was a departure from the prevalent style of ghazal rendition, which was heavily based on classical and semi-classical Indian music. Skeptics had their own reservations; purists scorned it, but it was widely successful among listeners and the album set new sales records.

In 1967, Jagjit met Chitra, also a singer. After a two year courtship they got married in December 1969.They epitomize the first successful husband-wife singing team. Jagjit and Chitra Singh have made immense contributions to ghazal music and the Indian music industry in general.

Successful releases of the duo include Ecstasies, A Sound Affair and Passions. While these albums were breezy, Beyond Time released in the opening years of 1990s was an experimentation with sounds.

Around this time the duo was struck by grief, when their only son, Vivek (21), died in a road accident on 28 July 1990. Their son was returning late night to A Road, churchgate residence .A few hours earlier,someone had crashed into the lampost and darkened the street and a repair truck came to try to repair it. Vivek accidently drove into the stationery truck and was killed. Their subsequent album Someone Somewhere was the last album with ghazals sung by both. After that Chitra Singh quit singing.^[3]. Jagjit Singh would often singh "Miti da bawa", which was originally sung by Chitra Singh in a punjabi film, which relates to his own story of losing a loved one at a young age.