Harmonious co-existence

The golden era of ghazals was the 80s when parallel cinema offered meaningful poetry and the voice of the likes of Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh and others. Come 2010, and the likes of Kailash Kher, Kavita Seth, AR Rahman are singing Sufi songs in Bollywood.

To honour both these forms, Pancham Nishad decided to host an event where both Kavita Seth and Jaswinder Singh would perform in an attempt to revive poetry in both forms.

Seth feels that Sufi has become popular today because of its range of poetry. “Ghazal music in films was beautiful and memorable but had a limitation as it spoke about romantic love. But Sufi music encompasses all of that and today’s filmmakers have taken to it,” she says.

But she would love to see ghazals come back and is even planning to do a project where she will incorporate the poetry and the shayari written by the likes of Hasrat Amir Khusro and Ghalib.
“Whatever I am is because of the nazams written by those poets and I want to honour them by singing their work,” says Seth who is slated to perform at a concert today alongside ghazal maestro Jaswinder Singh.

Jaswinder Singh, on the other hand, feels that ghazal and Sufi are based on the same basic principle and that is love. “Ghazals speak about worldly love and when that love becomes divine it becomes Sufi. The main reason for the fading away of ghazals has been the lack of a second generation of ghazal singers and writers,” says Singh.

But he feels that ghazals will soon see a revival. “I can see that ghazals are slowly and steadily coming back,” he says.