Shahid Parvez
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Ustad Shahid Parvez
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[edit] Introduction and Lineage
Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan is privileged with both belonging to an illustrious musical family, and for achieving success in not only preserving the tradition but in pushing its boundaries to even greater heights of aesthetic beauty. He belongs to the famous Etawah Gharana and belongs to the seventh generation of this musical lineage. His family has produced the most revered and influential figures in Hindusthani Classical Music including the likes of Ustad Sahabdad Khan , Ustad Imdad Khan, Ustad Enayat Khan , Ustad Waheed Khan and Ustad Vilayat Khan.
[edit] Childhood and Training
A very young Shahid Parvez was initiated into the rich music of the Gharana by his illustrious father and Guru Ustad Aziz Khan, a famous musician and a noted composer and the son of the legendary Sitar and Surbahar virtuoso Ustad Waheed Khansahab. As is the custom, Ustad Aziz Khan first initiated his son into vocal music and tabla, before training him on the Sitar over many years with all the intensity and rigor that had made this Gharana famous. Incidentally, he got his vocal training from his own uncle Ustad Hafeez Khan a famous singer and a surbahar and sitar exponent and received taleem in tabla for many years from Ustad Munnu Khan of the Delhi Gharana.
The young Shahid Parvez was recognized as a child prodigy and had started performing in public by the time he was only eight years of age. Tremendous perseverance and hard work over the years have been rewarded with an outstanding technical prowess and a mastery over Layakari. One of the numerous achievements of Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan is to have mastered both Vocal Music and the Tantrakari Baaj and then fuse them in such a way as to bring this complex amalgam within the easy reach of all. The idea to fuse intricate rythm into melody came to Shahid Parvez during his early twenties when he heard Pandit Ravi Shankar playing on a L.P. Shahid acquired as many as recordings as he could of Ravi, as he had for the first time heard the sitar played in a way so different from his Gharana.
[edit] Achievements
He is a Top Grade artist of All India Radio and a recipient of numerous national and international awards including the Sur Shringaar, the Kumar Gandharva Samman, the M.L. Koser Award , etc. He is also a recipient of the prestigious "Sangeet Natak Akademi Award" of 2006. He has performed in all major musical festivals in India and abroad including the Festival of India held in the US, Europe, USSR, Canada, Africa, Middle-East and Australia, enthralling the audience everywhere. With numerous LP records, audio and video cassettes, CDs and DVDs, numerous awards and accolades, and a distinguished performance career in India and around the world, he is widely recognized as a very reputable sitar player.
[edit] Comments on his Music
[edit] by Ustad Zakir Hussain
"....I do not think artists are any less fresh, creative or innovative today. It just depends on whom you are talking to. People who grew up with Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Vilayat Khan, Bismillah Khan and such legends expect music to be a certain way and remain a certain way. It brings back memories of their youth. Therefore, when others are not like the people they grew up with ............. that seems wrong. But then .....................But when you listen to the young musicians like Shahid Parvez .......... you know there is genius at work here, that something incredible is happening and these people will be remembered as the legends of their times. I am sure a young Ravi Shankar, a young Ali Akbar Khan had to go through the same criticism, and I cannot imagine the music lovers of yesteryears not seeing that and appreciating that eventually....."
[edit] by Ustad Asad Ali Khansahab
"Ye Vilayat Khan ki jawani ka sitar tha"
[edit] by Dr Salman Ansari
Artists like Shahid Parvez have given the Raga its timeless magnitude. The first notes come from somewhere deep and dark and soon the refrain is built up. The different notes of the Raga are approached in myriads of ways, linked by phrases of increasing complexity and contrast. Shahid Parvez makes the notes sing, giving them the colours of a vocal performance. The metallic timbre characteristic of string instruments is almost absent and one really begins to sing with him, begins to repeat the refrain again and again following the vibrating notes, every reprise evoking a new musical message. Some notes seem to stand still holding the passage of time, until they fade away like whispers and sighs. The transition from one phrase to the other, from high notes to deep ones is breathless. Indeed the structure of Alaap is strangely hermetic in the sense that all the attributes like pain and longing (Tamana), humility and inspiration, grief and joy, hope and futility are packed together in a few notes. Alaap, which is more like an adagio and in free rhythm, gradually acquires a more rhythmic structure and culminates in ecstasy.
[edit] Conclusion
For Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, the Sitar and Self are identical entities, and music is not just a discipline but life itself – vibrating and pulsating and full of colour. The power of his music is most immediately encountered in the highly charged sound quality he conjures from his Sitar and the sparkling intelligence that is the hallmark of his improvisatory music. By sheer precision and an astute artistic sense he has made for himself a place in the limitless, infinite universe of Indian Classical Music. As the Rajasthan Patrika once said – "After listening to Ustad Shahid Parvez, the future of Sitar is still bright after Pandit Ravi Shankarji."
[edit] Foot Notes
↑ This comment has been quoted from an interview given by Ustad Zakir Hussain to Kavita Chhibber available at her original website in this page Ustad Zakir Hussain - The Beat Goes On
↑ This has been quoted from an article in The Hindu (Friday, Apr 22, 2005) titled Forever the right ring by MANJARI SINHA
↑ This has been quoted from Dr. Salman Ansari's original article on Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan from the following page Crossing borders of perception: Reflections on listening to Shahid Parvez
