Renowned Ghazal Singer Jagjit Singh died at the age of 70, this morning at the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai after he suffered a brain hemorrhage.
Mr. Singh's funeral will take place tomorrow at the Chandanwadi crematorium in Mumbai. He was admitted to the hospial on September 23, owing to his illness, just few hours before his performance at a concert in the city.
Reports says that he has been on life support for the last few days and the doctors had kept him in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) till he died.
Mr. Singh is survived by his wife, Chitra.
Jagjit Singh was born on February 8, 1941 in Sriganganagar, Rajasthan, to Amar Singh, a government employee and Bachan Kaur. He had four sisters and two brothers and was called Jeet by his family.
He was raised as Sikh by religion. His name was Jagmohan but his Sikh father rechristened him as Jagjit following the advice of his Guru.
It was Singh's father who recognised his son's talent in Music and sent young Jagjit to learn the degree under a blind teacher, Pandit Chhaganlal Sharma.
Later on, he was trained under Ustad Jamal Khan of the Sainia Gharana for six years, and gained knowledge in Khayal, Thumri and Dhrupad forms.
He has left behind a huge body of work in a career spanning for five decades, including 80 albums.
Among his numbers, most memorable ones were Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho, Apni marzi se kahan and Pehle har cheez thi.
Critics often suggested that he sacrificed technique for melody. It didn't matter to the thousands of fans that enbaled the album to set sales records.
Mr. Singh married Chitra Datta in 1970. She belonged to a musical family in Kolkata and had been married when she was very young to a man who owned a sound recording studio.
Chitra was a popular jingler singer and her marriage had unravelled by the time she had met Mr. Singh.
They both started working together and did a lot of fine works in this field. In the year 1990, their only child Vivek, died in a bike accident, following which Chitra left her singing career. Mr. Singh cut back his albums drastically on his albums and concerts, opting instead to lend his support to campaigns for children's causes.
The Padma Bhushan awardee is also the only singer and composer to have composed and recorded songs written by Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in two albums namely, Nayi Disha (1999) and Samvedna (2002).
News reported by AR for Newsvision online newspaper
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