Jagjit Singh, a singer of wide popularity in South Asia who helped revive and popularize ghazals — a venerable form of Persian poetry set to music expressing the writer’s feelings, especially about love — died on Monday in Mumbai. He was 70.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage, a spokesman for Lilavati Hospital said.
Until Mr. Singh embraced the form, ghazal singing was followed largely by the elite. He helped bring it to a wider audience, including young people steeped in rock and hip-hop. With a hauntingly velvet voice expressing the brooding sadness and the lyricism of his songs, he performed to packed audiences in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia and released dozens of albums during his 40-year career. He also sang ghazals for Hindi films.
Jagmohan Singh, the son of a government official, was born into a Sikh family on Feb. 8, 1941, in the state of Rajasthan in northwest India. He was rechristened Jagjit on the advice of a family guru. He obtained a master’s degree in history from Kurukshetra University, in the northern state of Haryana.
Mr. Singh showed a talent for music, including singing, from early childhood, and in 1965 he moved to Mumbai to try make a career of it. After performing at weddings and singing advertising jingles, he established himself with his first album, “The Unforgettables,” in 1976.
The freshness of Mr. Singh’s voice — a departure from the prevalent style of ghazal rendition, heavily based on classical and semiclassical Indian music — earned him an enthusiastic following.
“The Unforgettables” was a joint venture by Mr. Singh and his wife, Chitra, a Bengali singer whom he had met in 1967 and who survives him. They sang together on many other albums. Their only child, a son, Vivek, died in a car accident in 1990.
Mr. Singh was awarded India’s third highest civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2003.
