Ghazal

A ghazal is a sung setting of a Persian, Urdu or Hindi-Urdu poem in couplets (sher), each pair self-contained and held together by a recurring rhyme and refrain. Performances run 70-100 BPM, with harmonium leading and tabla providing soft, ornamental rhythm; classical settings add sarangi (bowed lute) for melodic underlining. Vocals — male or female — deliver each couplet several times, varying ornament and melisma on every pass, and competitive singers display their craft through extended tan (rapid melodic runs). Lyrics treat love, divine longing, mortality, wine and absence, with the beloved deliberately ambiguous between earthly and divine.

The ghazal as a poetic form is Arabic in origin (seventh century) and reached its literary peak in 13th-14th century Persia with Rumi and Hafez. It entered South Asia through the Mughal courts and matured as a sung tradition in 18th and 19th century Delhi and Lucknow, where the great Urdu poets Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Ghalib supplied texts that singers still use today. Begum Akhtar, in mid-20th-century India, turned the ghazal from a courtesan-salon tradition into a concert-hall art. Pakistani master Mehdi Hassan refined the classical style further in the 1960s and 70s; Jagjit Singh, working in India in the 1980s, brought the form into the Bollywood mainstream with a lighter, guitar-and-keyboard production style.

The structure rewards patience: a single couplet may take three to five minutes as the singer revisits each line with new ornaments, often pausing while the audience murmurs 'wah wah' in appreciation. Listen for how the matla (opening couplet) sets the radif — the repeated refrain word — and how every subsequent couplet has to end on the same word while reaching a different rhyme. Harmonium chords sustain underneath while the tabla holds back, only opening up rhythmically when the singer signals.

Mehdi Hassan's 'Ranjish Hi Sahi' (1973) is the standard demonstration of classical Urdu ghazal singing. For the lighter modern style, Jagjit Singh's 'The Unforgettables' (1976) defined a generation's taste. Begum Akhtar's 'Woh Jo Hum Mein Tum Mein Qarar Tha' is the canonical female-voice example.

The word 'ghazal' derives from an Arabic root meaning 'to converse with a beloved' — etymologically related to 'gazelle.' Farida Khanum's 'Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo,' a 1973 Pakistani ghazal, has been covered continually for half a century, including a famous 2014 cinematic reuse in the Indian film 'Khoobsurat.'