Tag Archives: Ghulam Qadir Langoo

Faith no barrier

November 22, 2019Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Community Involvement / Social IssuesAbdul Majee Langoo - Music Teacher - Women's College - MA Road - Srinagar, Abdul Majeed Langoo, Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, Ghulam Qadir Langoo, Ghulam Qadir Langoo - Court Singer of Maharaja Hari Singh, Tasleema Langoo, Tasleema Langoo - Kashmiri Muslim - Singer, Tasleema Langoo - Muslim - singing Kirtans' for the Sikhs, Tasleema Langoo - Singer - Radio Kashmirmpositiveone@gmail.com

Srinagar, JAMMU & KASHMIR :

A Muslim woman is taking Sikh boys and girls in Srinagar closer to their religion by teaching them kirtan singing. Tasleema Langoo is a regular at Gurduwaras and finds applause even in the Golden Temple. Shazia Yousuf reports.

As she recited a shabad from Guru Granth Sahib at the Golden Temple Amritsar, almost everyone was engrossed in the melody of the kirtan. As soon as she finished, an old woman came towards her, almost crying, kissed her hands and hugged her.

“Now you are the voice of Sikh women. You have done what no girl could do, you are the honour of your Sikh community now.” The old woman said while taking off her golden earrings and gifting these to her.

She didn’t know the girl she was praising was a Kashmiri Muslim.

It is a three year old incident, but Tasleema Langoo’s association with kirtan is almost two decades old. The 26-year-old from Shaheed Gunj Srinagar has been teaching Kirtan to Sikh boys and girls since she was 14. She is perhaps the only kirtan tutor for the community in Srinagar.

She comes from a family of musicians. Her great grandfather sang for Maharaja Pratap singh, her grandfather Ghulam Qadir Langoo was a court singer of Maharaja Hari Singh. Her uncles and aunts have worked as musicians with Radio Kashmir. Tasleema’s father Abdul Majeed Langoo teaches music at Women’s college MA road.

Tasleema was five or six years old when some Sikh girls approached her father for learning music for religious purposes. “They were my father’s students from college. They would call him Langoo Veerji and wanted to learn harmonium and tabla from him for kirtan singing. I was the youngest daughter and would follow him like his shadow, watching and observing him,” Tasleema says while composing a shabad for her students at her Alochi Bagh residence where the family has recently moved in.

Every morning, Sikh girls would come with a shabad from Guru Granth Sahib and Tasleema’s father would compose it for them, “I would sing with them. Though there was music in every room of our house, but kirtan would excite me most,” she says.

It went on for many years. The students kept changing. And Tasleema’s love for kirtan compositions kept growing. She insisted on joining her father’s class where she would help his students in playing instruments who in turn would write shabads in Urdu (Arabic script) for her, “I was first hesitant, I thought it is disrespecting to sing something we don’t believe or mean. But she loved and respected it more than them,” says Tasleema’s father Majeed.

The class swelled with every day. It was now Tasleema who would sing to the compositions of his father for the students. “They were thrilled to hear her mesmerising voice that they couldn’t find in their community for years. Even the parents of students would come to listen,” says Majeed.

In 1998, when Tasleema was in 8th standard, she decided to start her own coaching class. “By now I was fully trained. The only difficulty was reading Granth Sahib in Punjabi. My father got a Urdu version from Amritsar for me,” she says. Tasleema says, she would start her day with morning prayers (Namaz) and recitation from Quran. “Then I would open Granth Sahib, memorise a new shabad and compose with the help of my father, for my students.”

In 2000, Tasleema left her studies after high school. The same year she gave her first performance in a gurdwara. Tasleema sang in the Gurdwara at Lal Chowk Srinagar on the invitation of a Sikh family. “First not many people were attentive, but when I sang, they were all humming and praising in Punjabi language.” She could hardly understand their words and kept pleading the family not to reveal her Muslim identity.

But when they came to know of her Muslim identity, she earned many blessings. More and more invitations for kirtan darbars followed. “There are two to three invitations in a month. On Sundays I sing in Chatti Padshahi Gurdwara. I sang in many kirtan darbars outside the state. People invite me to sing at Baisakhi and other festivals,” she says.

In 2001, a known singer Harjinder Singh spotted her in Chatti Padshahi gurdwara and advised her to go to Radio Kashmir. She went for an audition, qualified, and began singing kirtans for Radio Kashmir.

Afterwards, late Ghulam Nabi Sheikh encouraged her to go for Kashmiri auditions too. She did and thus began to sing in Kashmiri too for the radio.

Most of her time, however is spent in teaching. She has taught more than 200 Sikh boys and girls. At present she has 15 students. She charges Rs 300 each. And what about her neighbours and relatives. How did they react?

“Our home in Shaheed Gunj was adjacent to mosque. Once I was singing loudly with my students when the mosque imam entered our house. I was ready for a reprimand, but to my surprise, he gave his blessings and told me that I was doing a wonderful job by maintaining communal harmony at a time when our place needed it most,” she says.

Tasleema, however, gave in to her apprehensions in testing times. After the Chattisinghpora Massacre in which 36 Sikhs were killed by unidentified assailants, she stopped her classes. However she could not keep herself away for long and resumed her classes.

For the small Sikh community of Kashmir, she is a saviour of their traditions. “You cannot imagine what she is for our community. It is she who teaches us verses from our holy book every day,” says her student Supinder Singh of Bemina, a postgraduate student at University of Kashmir.

“We never feel she is different from us, she absorbs herself in every verse,” says another student, Manpreet Singh, an engineering graduate.

In 2007, when her magical voice reverberated in the Golden Temple, Sikh religious leader, Harbans Singh visited her house to thank him. “He told me, ‘you are doing us a favour’ and he gave me some money as well,” she says.

source: http://www.kashmirlife.net / Kashmir Life / Home> Faith> Music / by Shazia Yousuf, Kashmir Life / June 27th, 2010

Royal Musician

September 27, 2016Arts, Culture & EntertainmentBakshi Ghulam Mohammmed, Ghulam Qadir Langoo, Mohi-Ud-Din Langoo, Shabaan Langoompositiveone@gmail.com

KASHMIR :

Ghulam Qadir Langoo has been singing since he was a court singer of Maharaja Hari Singh

For 60 years Ghulam Qadir Langoo sang for rulers and the people of Kashmir, and his passion for music gave Kashmir, singers like Raj Begum. Shaziya Yousuf reports.

Ghulam Qadir Langoo, 95, spends his days reminiscent of his contribution to Kashmiri Sufiana music. Very few people know Langoo was a court singer for Maharaja Hari Singh.

Langoo’s family had a long association with the royal courts. His grandfather Shabaan Langoo was a Nakaal (entertainer) in Maharaja Pratap Singh’s court. As a child Qadir would accompany his father Mohi-ud-din Langoo to the court of Maharaja Hari Singh where he would watch him play santoor. “Maharaja would get happy and flung a gold coin, that meant much those days,” Langoo says.

Langoo learned music from his father to carry the legacy forward. Langoo’s father would also teach Hafiz Nagma to female dancers at his home.

And like his ancestors, Langoo’s stints in the court hardly brought him any riches. He lived a poor life and spent 60 years singing for the rulers, though he was a little better off than his relatives, who mostly were cobblers. “I sang for the kings, the kings kept changing. I was like an instrument that played for anyone who stroked its cords,” says Langoo.

Apart from Hari Singh, Langoo sang for Sheikh Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad and has also entertained Jawaharlal Nehru and other guests.
He has shared stage with Indian musical greats like Lata Mangeshkar, Aasha Bhonsle and Mahinder Kapoor, mostly playing Tanpura. His mastery over Tanpura (musical instrument) put him into a different class.

The Maharaja’s court, he tells, was different from the royal courts seen on television, with some resemblance though.

A lady dancer, called tawafan would do Hafiz Nagma by dancing and singing to the tunes of Sufi music that Langoo, with his choir, would play. “Guests would relish royal feasts, and sweets would be distributed among musicians. We would take sweets home. I still remember there was a cardamom plant in the royal lawns,” Langoo recalls.

Many decades later, when Radio Kashmir was inaugurated, Langoo sang for whole night in Polo Ground.

“Bhakshi Ghulam Mohammad once told that we can have our own radio station if I get many more singers for it. I worked day and night to gather the artists,” he says.

He was appointed in the station, as a singer and artist but says he would even compose music at times. Once, he says, the station required female singers for some contract. The station had none then. But Langoo was eager to secure the contract and the contract form required photograph of a female singer.
He did something, he now calls his madness. “I used my wife’s photograph (who was not a singer) despite her objections. I left her crying. It was my madness, all I could see was Radio Kashmir.”

Meanwhile they started searching for female singers, in which Langoo had a major role.

“Those days singing and performing arts was an affair of lower class people like my family. So I searched there,” he says. Thus he found and trained singers like Raj Begum, Zoon Begum and Naseem Akhtar.

Slowly music industry grew in Kashmir, and with it grew his passion for it. When Langoo’s only daughter was born, he named her after Raj Begum, who by then was a household name.

“I would sing in her ears…Later I took her to famous musician Shambo Nath Sopori for professional training, but did not let her join Radio Kashmir. It wasn’t a good place for girls,” he says.

In 1964 When Sheikh Abdullah was released from jail after 11 years, Langoo was taken to Pune by Shiekh’s fellow leaders where he sang his favourite song, Walo haa baagwaano and keam sana badlow soan takdeer, qaid-e-azam sheri Kashmir

Langoo and his group were also invited by Jawahar Lal Nehru to his mansion.
At the prime minister’s house where they sang for his Russian guests, Langoo remembers how their group was terrified by the sight of two pet bear cubs, and how a tea that the guests were praising tasted like “poison”.

Among his hosts, Langoo enjoyed singing most for Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad.

“Just a song of mine and he would forget who he was. He would join the choir and play some instrument mostly Noutt. I still remember how happy he would get,” Langoo recalls.

He sang on the foundation stone laying ceremony of new secretariat building where he says, “My photograph hung in corridors later, I don’t know if it is still there.”

While Langoo survived on royal patronage, the performing artists of the time were in a bad state. “It was pathetic. They would be always given leftover food. Most famous among the local populace was bacha nagmawhere a small boy dressed in women outfit would dance before men, he had to entertain each person individually, if he forgot to address someone, the poor boy would be beaten to pulp.”

Since his retirement from Radio Kashmir, some 30 years back, Langoo has been living a private life. For his contribution he has been honoured with Fazil Memorial Award, Bhakshi Ghulam Mohammad Award but the “metallic toys” as he describes them, hardly sum up his contribution to the Kashmiri sufi music.”

source: http://www.kashmirlife.net / Kashmir Life / Home> Music / June 08th, 2010