An evening with Ghulam Ali

One pleasant evening last week, we had the good fortune of attending a concert by Ghulam Ali. The concert was hosted by the Amity business school as a part of their annual festival. A cousin, who is a student of amity, had acquired the passes, and offered them to us - since I am into old hindi melodies, poetry and ghazals, and he decidedly is not.

But before I go further I have two confessions to make.
One, I am not a seasoned concert-goer. I barely have the experience of attending two or three live [classical/ghazal] concerts. So, apart from the anticipation of delay in starting of the concert, I did not have much idea of what to expect.
Two, although I love ghazal as a form of poetry, I am unable to highly appreciate ghazal as a form of music.
The second statement not withstanding, I just could not pass up the wonderful chance to listen to the maestro. And I must say, it turned out to be an incredible experience [apart from a few things.]

Let me first briefly describe the downside. The show started an hour late [which was almost expected]. We had anticipated the delay, and therefore turned up late ourselves [by half an hour], and found seats with some difficulty. To find good seats, we should probably have reached an hour earlier. But this was the least of the negatives. The most irritating was some of the peoples' fulfilling their social obligations, as represented by loud conversations, right there - over the phone, or in person. It was as if people who had absolutely no interest either in ghazal, or in Ghulam Ali, turned up just for the purpose of availing the benefit of free passes. People also insisted, extremely stubbornly, to take the photograph or video of the singer in action, despite his polite repeated requests to people to not to do so. Perhaps politeness has become an alien concept in our world, where people have no patience and humility. And I really wonder what did the people wanted to take these shots for - the singer was quite far away to get a good photograph, and the quality of sound captured by the video would have been pathetic. Did they just want to prove they were there ?!

And now, on to what made it an experience worth remembering for me. And do remember, I should be pardoned for over-enthusing, due to lack of prior experience :-)
He sang some very wonderful, very beautiful ghazals, starting with Ghalib's "Dil-e-naadaan tujhe huaa kya hai". One of things I really liked, and which is missing in recordings, is the singer's setting of the context - here he set a context for [almost] every ghazal - inroduced the poet, some trivia about the poet and/or the poem, and the 'raagaa' on which it's rhythm was based [although the latter makes little sense to my completely untrained ear, it is good to know :-)]. The second one was a sort of 'experiment' - he started singing a ghazal, sang few 'ashaar' from the ghazal, and then moved on to some 'ashaar' from another ghazal [these were probably connected through the poet, the context, or the 'raagaa' - I do not know which - I enjoyed it too much to care :-)], and then returned to the one he was singing. The third was the way of singing - to suit the lyrics of the ghazal. The point in case is that of "Dil mei.n ik lahar si uThi hai abhi" - he sang the line almost 20-25 times in succession, modulating the voice high and low, like a wave [lahar] rising and falling, and singing it differently each time, just as each wave is different from another. It was wonderful beyond words.
He sang the ghazals of famous poets, including Ghalib, Ahmed Faraaz, Ibn-e-Insha etal, and some of his most popular ones, like "Chupke chupke", "Aawaargi" and "Hungama". I had heard or read almost all the ghazals he sang in this concert, but the one I liked best that day was one that I hadn't come across before - a nazm [or was that something else?] by Ibn-e-Insha:
Yeh baatei.n jhoothi baatei.n hai.n, yeh logo.n ne failaayee hai.n
Tum Insha ji ka naam na lo, kya Insha ji saudaaii hai.n