Thursday, February 24, 2011

ghazal

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The ghazal as a form of music originated in Iran around the 10th century AD. It came to India with the Persian invasion in the 13th Century and, ever since, has captured the hearts and minds of people who listen to this beautiful, most poetic of genres.
The basis of the ghazal lies in Persian poetry. The language medium changed to Urdu sometime during the 13th century after Urdu became the accepted language of culture in the courts. One of the first, most prolific composers of the ghazal was Amir Khusrau who, it is said, at the height of his career wrote as much as one new ghazal a day. The ghazals of Amir Khusrau are still as treasured by connoisseurs or Urdu shayari, poetry, today.
Ghazals evolved from the Persian qasida which came to Iran from Arabia. The qasida often stretched to 100 or more couplets. The ghazal, through innovation, arrived at a dozen or so couplets. These couplets are composed in music that does not restrict itself to the rigid structures of ragas. One of the ghazal's greatest virtues, extolled widely when it first gained popularity, was that it was the kind of music that could draw from a variety of sources to arrive at a melody that made for perfectly aesthetic listening. Another beautiful aspect of the traditional ghazal is the fact that each of the shers, couplets, that comprise a ghazal can be quoted and used as individual sets of ideas, thoughts or feelings.
There have been many poets who composed ghazals over the centuries. Some of the more famous of them include Wali Mohammed Wali, Khwaja Mir Dard, Asadullah Khan Ghalib (known as Mirza Ghalib), Faiz Ahmed Faiz and the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.
The ghazal is still as widely popular today and composers like Gulzar and singers like Jagjit Singh rule the contemporary scene.

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