Jagjit Singh

Throughout his career Jagjit Singh earned the title “The Ghazal King” for his work as an Indian classical singer, composer, and musician. Following Ravi Shankar, he ranks among post-colonial India’s most significant and widely recognized figures and stands as its top-selling artist thanks to soundtracks and scores created for film and television plus his settings of poetry. Counting scores, he released more than sixty albums. His reputation rests equally on ghazals performed in multiple languages and on Indian light classical forms such as thumri and bhajan.

Together with his wife, the ghazal singer Chitra Singh, he rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, restoring a traditional vocal approach that had declined after the late 1950s. Working in the Bol-pradhan manner—poetry sung with vocal improvisation over fixed arrangements—he paired straightforward melodies and modes with lyrics that addressed contemporary concerns.

A Sikh born in the Punjab’s Rajasthan region, Singh began formal training at Khalsa College Sr. Sec. School, continued at Khalsa College, Sriganganagar, earned an arts degree, and undertook postgraduate work at Kurukshetra University in Haryana. His principal teachers were Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma and Ustad Jamaal Khan. Professional activity began in 1961 with All India Radio; in 1965 he relocated to Mumbai seeking entry into Bollywood as a singer or composer. Early prospects proved modest: he spent years on advertising jingles before securing occasional playback assignments. He met future wife Chitra Singh in 1967 and they married two years later. Although they appeared together, joint recordings waited until the mid-1970s. Their first album, The Unforgettables, appeared on HMV in 1977. Despite singing together on only two tracks, the single “Baat Niklegi” became an immediate success, praised for blending contemporary orchestration with the classical ghazal structure. Later ghazals fared respectably, yet they were eclipsed by the 1979 double album Come Alive in a Live Concert with ‎Jagjit and Chitra Singh and 1981’s Live in Concert at Wembley. The 1981 soundtrack Saath Saath and the 1982 soundtrack Arth, both composed by Singh, cemented the couple’s status as living legends; HMV lists them among its all-time best-selling soundtrack artists. Additional film scores include Premgeet, Tum Bin, Sarfarosh, Dushman, and Tarkeeb.

After their twenty-one-year-old son, Vivet, died in a car accident in 1991, Chitra Singh withdrew from performance. Singh proceeded independently, joining Lata Mangeshkar on the 1991 release Sajda, which reached number one at once and eventually became one of HMV India’s top-selling non-soundtrack titles. Frequent recordings followed, many in partnership with poet-lyricist Gulzar; every album issued in the 1990s charted. Extensive television work also began during the decade, yielding songs, serial themes, and scores for Heena, Neem Ka Pead, and Hello Jhindagi, among others. Singh turned to teaching, guiding singers such as Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Ashok Khosla, Ghanshyam Vaswani, Siza Roy, Talat Aziz, and Vinod Sehgal; he also discovered and mentored playback artist Kumar Sanu while continuing to perform, record, and compose for film. The 1998 Sahitya Academy Award recognized his popularization of Mirza Ghalib’s poetry through the score and soundtrack for the television series of the same name. In 2003 the Indian government conferred the Padma Bhushan; a Teacher’s Lifetime Achievement Award followed in 2006.

Singh suffered a brain hemorrhage before a concert with Ghulam Ali in 2011 and died on September 23. The state government of Rajasthan posthumously bestowed the Rajasthan Ratna in 2013, and Google marked the occasion with a homepage doodle. Since his death, reissues of his recordings and compilations have continued across Europe and Asia.