New Delhi: A biographical film on the late ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh is being premiered later this week to mark the 75th birth anniversary of the singer.

The film 'Kaagaz ki kashti' has been made by Brahmanand S Singh is an evocative account of a down-to-earth small-town boy from Ganganagar, Rajasthan, who made it big by adding that extra something in his music by giving it a polish and a soul at the same time and choosing simple but touching Urdu poetry, setting them to simple tunes and introducing western instrumentation to make them textured, contemporary and rich.

Jagjit is renowned for 50 years of singing, over 5,000 concerts, more than 40 countries on music tours, 80 albums, 500 plus ghazals, 300 bhajans and many memorable film songs that will resound loud for eternity.

Brahmanand said that Jagjit with his velvety voice was ‘perhaps the first Independent music star of India’ and the film brings the legend’s life story interwoven with his musical journey, highs and lows, losses and all his soulful yet resounding ghazals.

Though Jagjit’s birth anniversary is on 8 February, the film will be premiered on 5 February at NSCI, Worli, Mumbai, at 7 pm.

The film has just been completed and is now in its technical polishing stage (sound and picture corrections, etc) and will release officially very soon.

It features Jagjit’s wife Chitra Singh, lyricist and filmmaker Gulzar, filmmakers Subhash Ghai and Mahesh Bhatt, table maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain, cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, singers and music artists Pankaj Udhas, Anup Jalota, Talat Aziz, Ashok Khosla, Vinod Sehgal, Roop Kumar Rathod, Harsh Goenka, Daman Sood, Abhinav Upadhyay, Deepak Pandit, Ronu Majumdar, Atul Reninga, Geeta Prem, actress Ameesha Patel, and many others.

The film was shot in Ganganagar where Jagjit was born and grew up; Punjab where he spent some formative years, and finally Mumbai, where he flowered and established himself as a legend.