It was to be a concert bringing the two greats...two maestros of 'Gazal' (Gazal can be termed as a light classical indian musical genre...wherein poems written in Urdu language are sung expressively) together...Jagjit Singh and Ghulam Ali..for the first time! I have followed these two greats since my childhood...thanks to my father who was a fan of Ghulam Ali and my elder brother who became a fan of Jagjit during his college days..! I was looking forward to see them singing together.. interacting together..but something unfortunate happened. :(
I was on my
way to the concert..when I got a sms from organizers that Jagjit Singh would not
be able to perform due to health reasons and instead..Hariharan is going to join
Ghulam Ali. I was a bit disappointed ..though Hariharan is a wonderful
singer...but expectations were already set to see the two Gazal maestros
together whom I have admired for years. I sincerely pray to God for his quick recovery...a great singer who made Gazals accessible and popular among masses...Jagjit Singh ji...you have been an idol for me!
Hariharan
started with some of his popular gazals like ‘kash aisa koi manzar hota’.. ‘mai khayal hoon
kisi aur ka’ , 'mareez-a-ishq ka kya hai’, ‘patta patta buta buta’….all with
some wonderful improvisations and he created some breakthrough moments when you
automatically start clapping and sighing ‘wah wah’….but with due respect to him…somehow
that ‘rooh’ was missing…
Nevertheless
he was simply superb when he sang what he calls ‘urdu blues’, a gazal from
album kash ‘ye aaine se akele me’…. because according to him when he was
composing this track the notes resembled a lot with ‘blues’…a western musical
genre. I have been to few other fusion concerts..but none of them generated
much interest..all sounded like an stretched & forced alliance of eastern
& western forms! But here…it was a wonderful seamless fusion of western and
eastern music..I just wondered how effortlessly Hariharan was playing with
notes as he wished and all that play was making people wanting more & more!
Then came
the maestro himself…Ghulam Ali…but he was a pale shadow of his own brilliant
past…age seems to have affected his voice…he had to put a lot of effort in
singing….still he pulled it off quite nicely..through his unparallel earthy
eloquence…there is a lot to learn from him in the art of engaging the audience
in a performance…his style of singing some brilliant ‘sher’s..2 liners, explaining
meaning of difficult urdu words…polite manners…quoting some old interesting
stories about his musical journey..cracking jokes…all was quite charming. He was absolutely brilliant and sometimes
unbelievable on Harmonium….he didn’t need another Harmonium player..he played
all by himself….and it would have been just perfect if his singing was also
like the old days…. I was able to understand his ideas..& what he wanted to
sing but couldn’t. I was thinking oh God...if only I was born few years earlier so that I could have attended his concerts when he was at his prime...! :-)
The concert
ended with a jugalbandi, Hariharan giving company to Ghulam Ali for ‘Barasan
lagi’ a dadra in raag piloo (a semi classical form) …quite melodious…was good to watch audience humming
the ‘dhun’ of a semi classical stuff which was not that famous either.
Overall a good
concert...but one who has listened to Ghulam Ali’s old concert recordings…he’ll
be disappointed…badly missing that voice and style.
