Ye baatein Jhuti Baatein - Ghazal - A cover

Song: Ye baatein Jhuti Baatein 
Composer - Singer : Ghulam Ali
Genre : Ghazal 

Covered by : Murali Venkatraman

A beautiful ghazal which playfully convinces the beloved not to take the "rumours" but only "love" seriously.  A humble attempt from me.

Dil Mein ik Lehar - Ghazal - A Cover

Song: Dil Mein ik Lehar
Composer - Singer : Ghulam Ali
Genre : Ghazal 

Covered by : Murali Venkatraman

A ghazal that caresses you like a gentle wave of in the shore, one which distills the romance and admixes the solitariness with an exquisite tune.  A humble attempt from me.

Baharon Ko Chaman - A cover version

Song: Baharon Ko Chaman
Composer - Singer : Ghulam Ali
Genre : Ghazal 

Covered by : Murali Venkatraman

If ghazal is a poetic form which expresses the unrequited love of a platonic being and represents a monologue to one's beloved, the highest form of its human manifestation can be called Ghulam Ali.  There is none who would take a ghazal and present it such that the beloved would feel guilty and possible run into the hands of the forlorn lover.

In here, is a humble attempt to sing one of his signature ghazals - Baharon ko chaman.  The lyrics are reflective and contemplative in content.  Hence the master chooses a simple lilting tune with not many accidentals which could overwhelm the listener.

Hoshwalon ko khabar - A Cover Version

Song: Hoshwalon ko khabar
Film : Sarfarosh 
Composer : Jatin-Lalit
Originally Sung by : Jagjit Singh 
Genre : Ghazal 

Covered by : Murali Venkatraman

Thanks to Raja Govindarajan for introducing me to the wonderful world of semi-classical singing in Hindi, Bangla and Telugu in 2000.  He sent me two cassettes with the choicest melodies of Ghulam Ali's ghazals, Hariharan's Hazir, Ajoy Chakraborty's raagpradhaan and SPB's old telugu classics.  While gravitating to SPB's numbers was easy as my soul was nurtured in a south-indian family, I could not help but get severely attracted to ghazals and raagpradhaan. Thus over the past 15 years I have been predominantly into (self)learning the nuances of these genres helped amply by my wife Lalita and given some good pointers by my good friend Ramanan Moorthy (Dallas). In this process, I discovered a whole array of singers who made me crave for more and more of the melody genre where their deft singing embellished the gazillion accidentals which one could miss if a careful listening is not accorded.  Singers like Manna dey, Shyamal Mitra, Sandhya Mukherjee and Haimanti Shukla whose works I flirted with have now become the staple source.

However, both urdu and bangla are tricky languages with inflections, intonations and pronunciation that one needs to familiarize with, to an extent that he does not sound out of place or at times, idiotic. Both are north-indian languages which are similar to hindi in some sense ( urdu in grammar and bangla in vocabulary) but far different from it in many aspects as well ( urdu in vocabulary and bangla in pronunciation ).  Hence a singer constantly and consciously requires to examine his/her diction.  This had pretty much shunned me from singing and releasing anything in public for quite long.  However, I believe I have now reached a reasonable level where I do not at least sound downright out of place and this is probably the best I could hope for :)

When it comes to pronunciation, the master is Jagjit Singh.  Here I start with a famous ghazal of his from the film Sarfarosh.  Bouquets and brickbats welcome :)