Ghazals from Hyderabad - A performance by Anjali Gopalakrishnan August 20, 2009

Ghazals from Hyderabad - A performance by Anjali Gopalakrishnan. In the 14th century Mohammad Bin Tughlaq, ordered the entire population of Delhi to move to his new capital in the Deccan. Urdu (then called Hindavi) left Delhi only to return 300 years later and acquired a foothold south of the Vindhyas. The Bahmani, Adil Shahi and Qutab Shahi dynasties contributed to the growth and development of Indo-Persian and Indo-Islamic literature and culture in Hyderabad. Urdu poetry from which Anjali draws her inspiration for her ghazals was also the inspiration for her guru Vithalraoji who used to perform in the Nizam's court in Hyderabad. He has composed the ghazals being sung this evening in a style of his own which does justice to the poetry on which they are based unlike many modern ghazal compositions. Music is a personal form of expression for Anjali, and she finds the subtleties and potential for interpretation involved in ghazal gayaki very fascinating. Anjali has a masters' degrees in Physics from IIT Mumbai and Cornell. She was a teaching assistant at Harvard, and a high-school Physics teacher in Brooklyn, NY before she moved to India in 2005. She has been pursuing her interests in Indian vocal music more seriously since then. She is a student of Pt. Mani Prasad, a renowned vocalist of the Kirana Gharana as well as Pt. Vithal Rao, an eminent ghazal singer and composer from Hyderabad. She is fortunate to have been associated with both her gurus since the time she was a child, when her mother was their student. Since moving to India, she has worked as a Consultant at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development in Delhi, and as a marketing manager in Mumbai.

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