Renowned music composer Ghulam Ahmed Chishti also known as Baba Chishti was remembered on the occasion of his birth anniversary on Saturday.
Born on August 17, 1905, in Jalandhar, Chishti became fond of music in his childhood. He was later noticed by a stage play director Agha Hashar Kashmiri when Chishti came to Lahore in 1934 and hired his services to assist him with his work. Under Kashmiri’s influence, Chishti began learning the intricacies of the music industry and trained with him. Upon Kashmiri’s death, Chishti joined a recording company and began composing on his own. Amongst his first records were those for Jaddanbai and Amirbai Karnataki before partition.
Chishti had introduced Noor Jehan to the Lahore stage when she was nine years old in 1935. He started his career composing music for the films with Deen-o-Dunya in 1936. Once he got some recognition, he was offered to compose music for L. R. Shori’s film Sohni Mahival in 1938. He became known for his compositions both in Urdu and Punjabi languages. In Chishti’s career, things took a drastic turn for the better, after the independence of Pakistan. He decided to migrate to Pakistan in 1949 and offered his services as a musician to the Pakistani film industry. He composed music for three filmsin 1949. His initial compositions for Sachai, Mundri and Pheray (1949) were simultaneously produced. Pheray (1949) became a blockbuster hit and earned plaudits for the composer. It is reported that the six songs in the film were written, composed and recorded in a single day. Later in 1955, the Punjabi film Pattan (1955) came along and became a musical hit film for Baba Chishti and boosted his career and he became a well-sought-after music director by the film producers after the box-office success of this film. Chishti excelled at Punjabi compositions and had great influence on film music. With almost 5,000 tunes to his credit, he composed scores for over 140 films and was the first musician to reach the ‘100 films’ threshold in newly independent Pakistan after 1947.Being a poet, he had written lyrics for 12 of the most popular Pakistani film songs besides writing hundreds of other film songs during his career.
Besides Noor Jehan, Saleem Raza, Mala, Nassem Begum, Masood Rana and Pervaiz Mehdi were his discoveries in music industry. Ghulam Ahmed Chishti was awarded the Pride of Performance Award for Arts in 1989 by the President of Pakistan. He died at the age of 89 due to a heart attack on December 25, 1994 in Lahore, Pakistan.