Ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan passes away
His music soared above borders. Mehdi Hassan, arguably the greatest ghazal singer, passed away at a Karachi hospital on Wednesday, ravaged by failing lungs and a host of other ailments, leaving music lovers in both India and Pakistan with a deep sense of loss of a shared heritage. He was 84.
Singer Lata Mangeshkar had described his richly-textured voice loaded with meaning and melody as "the voice of god." On Wednesday, a tweet said, "It seems gods have taken a sudden liking to ghazals." Coming after Jagjit Singh's death last year, it wasn't surprising that Hassan's demise had triggered the thought.
"It's a setback to ghazal gayiki (singing). He was a school of singing. Just like Dilip-Raj-Dev influenced a generation of actors, similarly Mehdi Hassan's style influenced most ghazal singers," says Urdu poet Nida Fazli. "Hassan globalised ghazal. He used verses written by poets from both sides of the border. He even brought out an album of ghazals written by Ganesh Bihari "Tarz" from Uttar Pradesh.
