Singh Is King, Jagjit Singh - The Ghazal King & More Options

[swarapriya]

Jagjit Singh - The Ghazal King

Jagjit Singh. He was a true legend in his own time. In a span of nearly 35 years, by several estimations, he released 80 plus discs. But during the same time, along with his singing wife Chitra (see the attached pictures below), he released nearly 400 albums. These included, apart from the individual albums, various collections of songs from his released albums. This number is truly an astonishing achievement.

Jagjit Singh, though popularly known for his ghazals, also had numerous devotional albums to his credit. He also was active in many films. He was occasionally participated in composing music for TV shows. He sang in many languages, but mostly in Hindi and his mother tongue, Punjabi.

He was decorated with innumerable awards. Prominent of these include Padma Bhushan, Sahitya Academy Award, Sangeet Natak Academy Award, Sahitya Kala Academy Award, and host of others.

I was encouraged by several members of this Forum to start a thread on Jagjitji. Finally I decided to take the plunge.

Jagjitji, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 70, left us with a legacy of overwhelming song contributions. Singhji was affectionately known as the Ghazal King. Because he lives through his work in our hearts forever, Singhji is still the King.

I will start this thread with Singhji’s discography. I split this into various parts, sorted alphabetically. Each part of the discography lists 20 albums. I will upload these parts below.

I will follow up this with a devotional album of Jagjitji.

Next, the discography…

[swarapriya]

Live in Concert - Dar es Salaam - Vol. 1

1969 was a concert year for Jagjitji. He and Chitraji were in a live concert somewhere in India (Mumbai?) that resulted in the two albums I have uploaded earlier (“Come Alive in a Live Concert”). He also made a trip with Chitraji to Pakistan. That concert realized five albums. I have these albums and will upload them one at a time in a few weeks. Then, he toured (without Chitraji) to the city of Dar es Salaam in Nigeria. He made this trip with the Rainbow group out of Mumbai. The troupe also included the singers Taj Ahmed and Shankar Ganguly. The result of the trip was another two albums. These were released both as LPs and cassettes. I am not certain whether they were ever released in CDs. These two albums are almost rare and very difficult to find. I was fortunate to get hold of the cassettes. I am uploading ghazals from these two cassettes in two consecutive weeks, one this week and the other next week. Please be warned that the quality of these recordings is not to the mark even though the songs come out loud and clear.

I am uploading ghazals from the first volume in two back-to-back posts. The music for these ghazals is by their respective singers. Here are the ghazals in the first post…