Anyone who knows me well, will know how much I love urdu and punjabi ghazals sung in semi-classical fashion. I grew up listening to and singing along with the soulful ghazals of "Fankaars" such as Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hassan, Pervez Mehdi, Anup Jalota, Jagjit Singh, Talat Aziz, Riaz & Imtiaz Ali Khan, even Pankaj Udhas in his early days(when he was not so commercial), and more recently Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Hariharan.
Late last week I got a call from a Singaporean friend of mine, Amarjeet Bajwa, who was calling from Melbourne, Australia. Some of you may recall a few years ago we had a young Sikh ghazal exponent, Jasvinder Singh, who performed a couple of shows in Malaysia and Singapore to launch his latest ghazal album, "Arsh". Amarjeet was the one who composed the music for that album. If you haven't heard that album, you have been missing out on something truly wonderful. Amarjeet has done an awesome job with the music which is blend of Indian classical/contemporary and even a bit of modern Jazz. Somehow that album always finds its way and stays in the cd changer of my car for long periods.
Amarjeet's call this time around was to introduce me to an old friend of his, a gentleman from Mumbai by the name of Ghulam Abbas Khan, who is a well known ghazal, sufi, classical vocalist and comes from a family of highly acclaimed musicians. Ghulam Abbas was in Melbourne to perform in a few ghazal shows and as good fortune would have it, he had a stop-over in KL enroute back to Mumbai. I immediately accepted Amarjeet's idea of organising a small ghazal mehfil for us to listen to this wonderful and gifted musician in a live setting. Despite the short time span my good friend Bhajan Singh, a remisier with TA Securities has been very helpful in getting the show together and we are hopeful it will be a success albeit on a small scale due to time constraints.
The details are as follows:-
Venue : SSU Club Aman
Date and Time : Saturday, 1st September, 2007 at 8 pm
Contribution : RM20 per pax to cover expenses.
There will be a short tea break in between and some light refreshments like mee hoon and samosaas will be served.
This promises to be an excellent and memorable musical evening. So guys please do come and join and do spread the word around to other Ghazal lovers. You can call/sms me to book a seat (012-2050664).
