RIP Jajit Singh

The highly revered Late Jagjit Singh is a man who needs no introduction. The Messiah and savior of Ghazal and more frequently referred to as the Ghazal King left for his heavenly abode on the 10th of October, 2011 after battling coma for a while caused by a deadly brain hemorrhage. His death has surely left a huge void to the entire music industry as apart from being a prominent Ghazal singer he also happened to be a composer, music director, entrepreneur and activist. 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 in a house that was known as Pat Ram Ki Chhikari (cluster of six houses). 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. Jagjit Saab gained acclaim together with his wife, another renowned Indian Ghazal singer Chitra Singh in 1970's and 80's as the first successful husband-wife duo act in the history of recorded Indian music. Together, they are considered to be the pioneers of modern Ghazal singing and regarded as most successful recording artistes outside the realm of Indian film music. Their combination album on HMV comprising music from films, Arth (Meaning, 1982) and Saath Saath (Together, Along, 1982), is their largest selling album of all time. Sajda (An Offering, 1991), Jagjit Singh's magnum opus double album with Lata Mangeshkar holds the same record in non-film category. He had sung in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Sindhi and Nepali languages. He was awarded India's third highest civilian honour, the Padma Bhushan, in 2003 for his contribution to the fields of music and culture. Singh is credited for the revival and popularity of ghazal, an Indian classical art form, by simplifying the complex form of ghazals into a simpler form of ghazals by amalgamating ghazal and geet. His music became popular in mass media through

films such as Prem Geet (1981), Arth and Saath Saath (1982), and TV serials Mirza Ghalib (1988) and Kahkashan (1991). Jagjit Singh is considered to be the most popular ghazal singer and composer of all time in terms of commercial success. With a career spanning over five decades and a repertoire comprising 80 albums, the range and breadth of his work has been regarded as genre-defining. He is the only composer and singer to have composed and recorded songs written by Prime Minister - Atal Behari Vajpayee - also a critically acclaimed poet - in two albums, Nayi Disha (1999) and Samvedna (2002). Jagjitji is survived by his wife Chitra, with whom he performed successfully until their son Vivek died in a freak road accident in 1990. Chitra has not performed publicly since then. His step-daughter Monica, who was Chitra's daughter from a previous marriage, died two years ago.