The transformation of the South Asian music industry occurred roughly between 1977 and 1985. The first years of this period were a transitional stage, marked by the emergence of a simplified and commercial-song version of the Urdu ghazal, an Arabic- and Persian-derived poetic form consisting of thematically independent couplets set to a strict meter and rhyme scheme. For several centuries in North India, singers and especially courtesans have sung ghazals as refined light classical pieces. In the...
