जी. ए. चिश्ती

Ghulam Ahmed Chishti (17 August 1905 – 25 December 1994), known professionally as G. A. Chishti, was a music director, lyricist, and playback singer who began his career in the pre-Partition Hindi/Urdu film industry centred in Lahore. Born in Gunnachaur village near Jalandhar, Punjab, he moved to Lahore in 1934, where he trained under playwright Agha Hashar Kashmiri before starting his film career with Deen-o-Duniya (1936). Over the following years he composed music and wrote lyrics for films including Khamoshi (1942), Manchali (1943), Kaliyan (1944), Shukriya (1944), Albeli (1945), Yeh Hai Zindagi (1947), and Jugnu (1947), working alongside contemporaries such as Pandit Amarnath and Master Ghulam Haider.

After the Partition of India in 1947, Chishti migrated to Pakistan in 1949, where he became one of the founding figures of the newly formed Pakistani film industry, composing music for three films simultaneously during its early, talent-starved years. His score for Pheray (1949) became Pakistan's first silver-jubilee hit. Over his career he composed for an estimated 140–150 films — nearly 5,000 tunes in all — and was honoured with Pakistan's Pride of Performance award in 1989. Affectionately known in the industry as "Baba Ji," he died in Lahore in 1994.