At the end of this week, a new beginning will dawn upon singer Gayatri Asokan. On July 22, before an august gathering at the prestigious Khazana festival in Mumbai, she will unveil her maiden solo ghazal album ‘Ghazal Gaze’. The fest, which has a line-up of titans from the ghazal world, will see singing legend Pankaj Udhas releasing the album.
This is the moment Gayatri’s dreams come true. “I feel lucky to have gotten such a big festival to be the platform of my album launch. I’ll be presenting a concert as well. For many years, I have been performing Urdu ghazals, with not an album to claim my own. Being on the national radar is a prerequisite for an accomplishment like this. Now, the hour has come,” says Gayatri.
Since relocating to Mumbai with her musician husband, Gayatri is more involved in the concert scene. She is an important part of Classicool — her husband’s concert concept — in which a few of the best musicians in India sing and perform.
Gayatri’s earlier albums were reserved for devotional and spiritual songs. ‘Anahata’, which released in 2002, was her first. In Malayalam, she was part of collaborative ghazal album projects. Two of them were with Shahabaz Aman and one with Umbayi.
Her latest, ‘Ghazal Gaze’, is a six-song album, five of which are composed by Siraj Khan and one by her husband — Sitar maestro Purbayan Chatterjee. Purbayan’s composition of Kaisi Hai Zindagi… has fresh lyrics penned by Rachana Dixit. The others are traditional verses, popular in the ghazal circuit. It took two years of effort to come up with this album.
“In all these years, the album remained in the planning stage. The recording part got over in seven months. Three of the songs have video footage. My husband and I appear in one,” the singer says. Two songs have video shot within the recording studio and the other has been shot outdoors.
“There was a time, in the cassette era, when music was enjoyed in its sound form, with no visual accompaniment. These days, people like to see things. Facebook videos and video footage are in high demand,” says Gayatri, adding, “There are no dramatic visuals in the album. After all, poetry and music are of utmost important in ghazals. We got creative satisfaction from doing this work.”
