MUMBAI: From international artiste with Hollywood flavour to Bollywood music, Mumbai has offered its residents all genres of concerts. From all the past concerts, ghazal lovers were somewhere ignored. So, for them, Nirva Music presents ghazal concert with one of the eminent ghazal singer Pandit Girish Chandra in the city on 2 March 2017.

Girish Chandra started singing in Vaishnava temples, under the influence of ‘Haveli’ sangeet, at the age of 6. His initial musical training was under Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur. Girish Chandra’s forte in music includes bhakti sangeet, ghazals, thumri, badakhayal, chottakhayal .

Chandra has worked under legendary music composer Madan Mohan from 1961 to 1970 in seven films including ‘Mera Saaya, Dastak’, ‘Haste Zakhm’, ‘Heer Raanjha’, and ‘Laila Majnu’ and ‘Woh Kaun Thi?’

Pandit Girish Chandra is settled in the USA from past 45 years. He has performed in various countries like Spain, Italy, France, U.K, Canada, Germany, and U.A.E.

The Ghazal Samrat talked about his upcoming concert in Mumbai. He said, “I have been associated with music since my childhood. Later, I performed for the longest time in the USA in front of a musically inclined audience. My forte in music is mainly bhakti sangeet, thumri and ghazals.”

Girish Chandra also provides training of voice culture techniques to the students and manages live workshops in various universities.

“It is my debut programme in India. On my upcoming concert in Mumbai, I am presenting myself as singer and composer, in which I will be presenting my own composition which people never had a chance to listen. I am also coming up with my first album ‘Kabhi To Shaam Dhale’ which I also named as Ghazal Reborn. In that concert, I will be mainly focusing on bhakti sangeet, thumri and ghazals giving my own treatment to it.”

He also talked about ghazal as a genre, he said, “Ghazal gives you an experience of many emotions at one time like love, pain, and relationships. Ghazal basic flow of emotions in which you have beautiful balance of literature and music. My effort has been to concentrate on purity of my compositions. Unfortunately, in India, Bollywood has been a money making machine. Bollywood music is considered as the only form of music but there are other forms of music which don’t get its due credit which they deserve. I feel to take forward ghazal to future generations; Bollywood composer should explore this genre.”

Performing in major countries abroad, he observes that audience there are far more matured than Indian audience. They miss cultural roots very heavily. They have more knowledge and always curious to know about detailing in music.