A tribute to sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan

Shailaja Khanna

DESCRIBED by Western classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin as the “greatest instrumentalist of the 20th century”, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was born on April 14, 1922. As his disciples and fans celebrate his birth centenary worldwide, his influence on Indian classical music remains as pervasive 13 years after his death on June 18, 2009.

Top honours

• 1960 Best Musician of the Year Award for music of film ‘Hungry Stones’ (Tapan Sinha)
• 1963 President of India Award from the Government of India; India’s highest award for the arts
• 1966 The President of India Award, for the second time
• 1970 Padma Bhushan award from the Government of India
• 1988 Padma Vibhushan award from the Government of India
• 1991 MacArthur Fellowship (Genius Grant)
• 1997 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, USA October 18th proclaimed “Ustad Ali Akbar Khan Day” by Mayor of San Francisco
• 1999 Five Grammy nominations Appointed Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Music to the Department of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Among the younger generation of concert instrumentalists today, there are more sarod and fewer sitar players, a testimony, perhaps, to his magic. His eldest son, Ustad Aashish Khan (82), says, “The sound of his sarod, that kind of tonality had never been heard before.”

His extraordinary musical life started in the remote town of Maihar in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, and ended in California, USA, where he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1991, the only Indian musician to be thus honoured. Rues Aashish Khan, “It’s a pity my father was never honoured with the Bharat Ratna by the Indian government; his contribution in spreading Indian classical music on the global stage is phenomenal but he never made efforts for any public relations exercise, or to promote himself.”

The rigorous and gruelling training in Maihar under his father Baba Allaudin Khan prepared him for his future greatness. It seems his innate irrepressible creativity sometimes interfered in his recall of the exact contours of a ‘bandish’ (composition) as taught by his father, for which Baba would harshly berate him. Apparently, Ali Akbar bore the brunt of his father’s perfectionist expectations more than any other of his students. Perhaps this propelled him to go away from his father when he was able to escape; Ali Akbar Khan left Maihar at a very young age. Years later, he would privately lament this fact and wish he had stayed longer with his father to imbibe more; “to look into his eyes” (which he never did out of respect), says son Alam Khan, and adds, “This militaristic upbringing created the diamond Ali Akbar Khan was.”

His travels to establish himself took him initially to Lucknow, then to Jodhpur in 1944. The maestro’s father had been invited by Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur, but Allaudin Khan remained loyal to the Maihar ruler. He instead sent the 22-year-old Ali Akbar. Within a short time, the young man gained acclaim in Jodhpur as well as the title of ‘Ustad’. Jodhpur-based sarod player Pt Basant Kabra, a disciple of Annapurna Devi, recalls, “In the old days, in Jodhpur, he was always referred to as ‘Ustad’. If one just said Ustad, without adding the name, it meant only Ali Akbar Khan sahib!”

The Ustad stayed in Jodhpur till Maharaja Hanwant Singh was alive. Pt Basant Kabra, whose family has a two-generation link with the Khans, reminisces, “Khan sahib told my father of an incident in 1951, when he, Pt Ravi Shankar and Pt Kishan Maharaj had performed at the wedding of the Princess of Jodhpur, and His Highness was so pleased at their performance that he told them to take as many silver coins as they could carry back! There are more incidents of incredible royal generosity — once when His Highness saw Ustad on a bike, he sent a car for him. There are so many memories. Actually, Khan sahib used to rarely talk about anything other than music, or music-related memories.”

About his bond with Jodhpur, Khan sahib always said he could never refuse anything to even Maharaja Gaj Singh, Maharaja Hanwant Singh’s son, even decades after the Ustad left Jodhpur in 1952. Gaj Singh was only four then. Such was the relationship that lasted generations between the family of the patron and the artiste.

Pt Kabra shares another interesting incident when the great Ustad Faiyaz Khan (then regarded as the senior-most vocalist in India) visited and sang in Jodhpur, in the late 1940s. “His Highness requested his favourite, Ustad Ali Akbar, to perform after Ustad Faiyaz Khan. The young Ali Akbar refused as a mark of respect, saying he couldn’t possibly play after such a doyen. Ustad Faiyaz Khan then offered to perform with Ali Akbar Khan, an unheard-of, unexpected honour!”

After leaving Jodhpur, Ali Akbar went to Bombay and then Calcutta. Starting with Chetan Anand’s ‘Aandhiyan’, he composed music for 40 Hindi films. All leading singers of the time, including Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi, sang his songs. In Bengal, too, he composed for iconic filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray in ‘Devi’ in 1960. His creativity saw the flowering of several ragas, some composed spontaneously, like Chandranandan, at a radio recording where he was asked to play something new.

Fate took him to USA in the 1960s and that became his eventual home. Initially teaching in a college in Berkeley, he established the Ali Akbar College of Music in California in 1967. The archive set up there by his wife Mary Khan has more than 40 years of recordings.

An equally important aspect of his legacy was his teaching. He taught several musicians, including his sons Ustad Aashish Khan, the late Prof Dhyanesh Khan, late Rajesh Ali Khan, American-born Alam Khan and Manik Khan, and daughter Ameena Pereira. His other students included celebrated instrumentalists such as the late Pt Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), the late Vidushi Sharan Rani (first Indian woman instrumentalist and sarod player), the late Pt Damodar Lal Kabra (sarod, guitar), the late Pt Brij Bhushan Kabra (guitar), the late Vidushi Sisirkana Dhar Choudhury (violin), Pt Rajeev Taranath (sarod), Pt Tejendra Narayan Majumdar (sarod) and Purbayan Chatterjee (sitarist). They, in turn, have been prolific teachers, so the current world of music has several disciples who follow the tradition of Maihar Gharana. Says Alam Khan, “It was important for my father to spread his father’s music. So he would teach whoever he could. In the US, I think he had a kind of freedom in the way he expressed himself.”

Recalls Ustad Aashish Khan, “I played withmy father in concerts a few times, and I had a hard time keeping up with him.” (This from a man who had learnt from his grandfather, Ustad Allaudin Khan!)

At 89, Mysore-based Padma Shri Pt Rajeev Taranath is today Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s oldest student alive. Starting in 1955 in Bombay, Pt Taranath subsequently learnt from his guru in Calcutta in the mid-1960s, staying in Khan sahib’s second house there. The learning relationship culminated in 2005, when the two played Raga Puriya together in the US. “After this event, he could never play the sarod. I last met him six months before he passed away. My admiration and devotion for him was limitless. I literally used to kiss his feet when I met him,” adds Pt Taranath.

Says Alam Khan, “Khan sahib was a beautiful human being in addition to being an incredible musician. As a father, he was very loving; as a teacher, the more serious I got in my playing, the more serious he was in teaching me. He never hit me, but would convey his dissatisfaction if something was not up to his standards. We never felt we could get by with anything. We walked on a tightrope during class though he was thorough and patient.”

Pt Tejendra Majumdar had learnt for 18 years from Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s cousin Ustad Bahadur Khan, before he started learning from “The God”, as he called Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, in 1991, at age 30. Though by then Pt Majumdar was already holding concerts, he says learning from Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was very different. “I realised then that had I started learning from him 10 years earlier, I wouldn’t have understood anything. In fact, I still don’t fully understand what he taught me.”

Pt Taranath says, “Ours is a magnificent teaching gharana. Baba Allaudin Khan understood the difficulty of learning music, which he himself had experienced. He taught prolifically, not only from within his family as was usual (the term gharana referred to ‘ghar’; all male children were taught), but primarily to ‘non-gharanedaar Hindus, even women’.”

Speaking of this unique training system of Maihar Gharana, Pt Kabra says, “Music was always played first, then written down so as to aid memory. Both Ma (Annapurna Devi) and Khan sahib would permit notations, but only after one had mastered the composition.”

Sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee says, “I was lucky to be one of the youngest to be taught in the gurukul system, staying with the guru all day. I used to sleep in the music room at the Ali Akbar Khan College; he’d even give me money for groceries, as he believed that the guru should feed and clothe his shishya. A lot of his teaching was anecdotal. He used metaphors and similes to explain music. I remember once while describing the difference between Raga Marwa and Raga Puriya (having the same note structure but different moods), he expressed it thus: ‘A raga is like a woman. When you are with one woman, be with her heart and soul, don’t let the memory of another come in’.”

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan had an incredible intensity in his music; he could transport his listeners as much as he himself would get lost in his own music. Alam Khan says, “Music was his prayer, it was not for entertainment.” Pt Taranath adds, “Of course, his teaching legacy is important, but it’s his music that is his biggest legacy.”

Many other disciples recall the Ustad saying, ‘Don’t play with your eyes open, don’t get distracted, you may not be able to enunciate the raga fully; look inwards.’ His saying seems to have borne fruit as, even today, an Ali Akbar Khan recording takes one to a different realm.