Jagjit and Chitra Singh took India’s musical world by storm in the late 1960’s and revolutionised ghazal singing. Before, ghazals had been sung only during musical performances to a small elite audience. Now, almost a year after the maestro’s death, Chitra Singh breaks her 22-year silence to release the album, Master and his Magic, with original songs by her husband.
Chitra was born into a Bengali family which had strong musical roots. She picked up her music by listening to her mother’s music teacher. Jagjit Singh was in Mumbai struggling to make a living by singing jingles. Chitra was also a jingle singer, trapped in an unhappy marriage, with a daughter. After she divorced her husband, Chitra and Jagjit were married in 1969. While the couple performed many times as a duo, they only met with surprising success after the launch of the album, The Unforgettables. Their song, Baat niklegi, became very popular and was called ground-breaking.
The duo sang in Hindi, Bengali and Punjabi. Chitra said that Jagjit Singh composed many songs tailored to Chitra Singh’s voice because of how well he knew her. Many of Chitra’s Bengali songs are still popular in West Bengal, like Ki dile amai tumi? and Amar chokher joler majhe.
But after the death of her son, Vivek, Chitra stopped singing and left the limelight. In a 2007 interview, she said, “My world came crashing down. I had reduced to 43 kilos and looked like a ghost. I couldn’t face people — mera gala apne aap bandh ho gaya. And it stayed like that for nearly 14 years. I didn’t even hum during those years. But one morning, while I was looking at Vivek’s photograph, I felt I was dishonouring my gift. Also, Vivek was so proud of our singing. Just to honour his memory, I wanted to sing again.” But she feels that her voice has lost its quality and so she will not be singing in public again.
Chitra is very spiritual. She believes people get only what they are meant to. She believes she got what she was meant to when she was with Jagjit. She’s had a great musical career with him. She draws her inner strength from this spirituality and faces the tragedies life has thrown at her. She says Jagjit Singh was her guru and that she will always be besotted with his music. In the beginning though, she didn’t like the way he sang. But when she started listening, it grew on her and she came to love it.
A few months ago, an ardent fan of Jagjit called her saying he had a collection of Jagjit’s unreleased songs from various performances. He handed them over to her, after which she worked on restoring and re-mastering them as they weren’t studio recordings.
“They have been recorded at different time periods and have been collected by our friend. There is no theme to this album; this is a mix of his emotions, his thoughts and his mood while performing. Jagjit ji used to always present his fans with something new in all his live concerts as a surprise element and this collection is that,” she said, when asked why they hadn’t been released before. She says each ghazal is unique and she feels a connection with them. While she is not a part of the album, fans will be able to hear her.
Fans will get to hear eight unreleased original compositions penned by India’s greatest lyricists — Wasim Bareilvi, Farag Roohvi and Ghalib. These ghazals take you through the different phases of Jagjit Singh’s life. Chitra plans on releasing the album at the time of his first death anniversary — October 2012.