Ghazal

'Ghazal' a kind of light song with Persian origin. There are two main branches of Indian songs: Hindustani or North Indian songs and Karnataki or South Indian songs. Ghazals belong to the former group, with the two main centres located in Delhi and Lucknow. The language of the Indian ghazal is mainly urdu, though Indian poets have also written persian ghazals.

The ghazal is erotic in nature, expressing diverse emotions of lovers: courtship, passion, repentance, apathy, separation, desire, togetherness, etc. While many ghazals are about secular love, many of them are philosophical and express love and devotion towards God in terms of human love. 

In the ghazal, words are more important than the tune. The poem relies upon word play, delighting the audience with the cleverness of the poet. Although the ghazal is about erotic love, it can be on any subject. The nature of the ghazal is soft, and, like tappa and thungri, it uses sweet and slow ragas, such as k'a'fi, jhijhint, kh'a'mv'a'j, bhairav'i, pilu, v'a'roy'a. The common rhythms used are pashtu and d'i'pavand'i. 

The pioneer of Bangla ghazals was atulprasad sen. Atulparasad lived in Lucknow where he learned ghazals. kazi nazrul islam also wrote Bangla ghazals and greatly popularised them. moniruddin yusuf has also written a number of Bangla ghazals. In recent years, the singing of Urdu ghazals has become popular, and new Bangla ghazals are also being composed. [Mobarak Hossain Khan] [Khan, Mobarak Hossain  former DG, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy]