Concert update

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.