Ali Akbar Khan

Ali Akbar Khan
Background information
Born (1922-04-14)14 April 1922
Origin Comilla, East Bengal (present day Bangladesh)
Died 18 June 2009(2009-06-18) (aged 87)
San Anselmo, California, United States
Genres Hindustani classical music
Occupation(s) Composer, Sarodiya
Instruments Sarod
Associated acts Allauddin Khan, Ravi Shankar

Ali Akbar Khan (14 April 1922–18 June 2009) was a Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, Khan also composed several classical ragas and film scores.[1] He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the USA and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland.

Khan was instrumental in popularizing Indian classical music in the West, both as a performer and as a teacher. He first came to America in 1955 on the invitation of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and later settled in California.[2] He was a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.[3]

Khan was accorded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1989.[4] Nominated five times for the Grammy Award, Khan was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts's National Heritage Fellowship.

Childhood and training

Ali Akbar Khan was born in the village of Shibpur, Nabinagar Upazila, Brahmanbaria, in present-day Bangladesh, (then Comilla, East Bengal), to renowned musician and teacher, Allauddin Khan and Madina Begum.[5] Soon after his birth, Khan's family returned to Maihar (in present-day Madhya Pradesh, India) where his father was the primary court musician for the Maharaja of the princely state.[6]

From an early age Khan received training from his father in various instruments as well as vocal composition, but finally gravitated towards the sarod. Allauddin was a perfectionist and a strict taskmaster, and Khan's lessons started before dawn and often lasted 18 hours a day.[7] Khan also learned to play the tabla and the pakhavaj from his uncle, Aftabuddin Khan, who he visited at Shibpur.[8] During this period he met several prominent musicians, such as the sarodist Timir Baran and flautist Pannalal Ghosh, who came to study with his father; in later years he was joined in his lessons by his sister Annapurna Devi, who became an accomplished player of the surbahar, and fellow student Ravi Shankar. Shankar and Annapurna Devi were married in 1941.[6]

Of his training on the sarod, he wrote:

If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist—then you may please even God.[9]

Career

Ali Akbar Khan, after years of rigorous training, gave his debut performance at a music conference in Allahabad in 1936, at the age of 13. Three years later, in December 1939, he accompanied Ravi Shankar on the sarod during the latter's debut performance at the same conference; this was the first of many jugalbandis (duets) between the two musicians. In 1938 Khan gave his first recital on All India Radio (AIR), Bombay (accompanied on the tabla by Alla Rakha), and starting in January 1940, he gave monthly performances on AIR, Lucknow. Finally in 1944, both Shankar and Khan left Maihar to start their professional careers as musicians; Shankar went to Bombay, while Khan became the youngest Music Director for AIR, Lucknow, and was responsible for solo performances and composing for the radio orchestra.[7]

In 1943, on his father's recommendation, Khan was appointed a court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanwant Singh.[10] There, he taught and composed music besides giving recitals and was accorded the title of Ustad by the Maharaja. When the princely states were wound down with India's independence in 1947 and Hanwant Singh died in a plane crash in 1948, Khan moved to Bombay.[7]

In Bombay, he won acclaim as a composer of several film scores, including Chetan Anand's Aandhiyan (1952). Lata Mangeshkar sang the title song, "Har Kahin Pe Shaadmani" and as a token of her respect to sarod maestro, did not charge any fee.[11] This was followed by Satyajit Ray's Devi (1960), Merchant-Ivory's The Householder, and Tapan Sinha's Khudito Pashan ("Hungry Stones", 1960), for which he won the "Best Musician of the Year" award. He also played Sarod for a song in 1955 film Seema which had the music composed by Shankar Jaikishan. Later in 1993, he would score some of the music for Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha.[12]

Beginning in 1945, Khan also started recording a series of 78 rpm disks (which could record about three minutes of music) at the HMV Studios in Bombay. For one such record he conceived a new composition Raga Chandranandan ("moonstruck"), based on four evening ragas, Malkauns, Chandrakauns, Nandakauns and Kaushi Kanada. This record was a huge success in India, and the raga found a worldwide audience when a 22-minute rendition was re-recorded for the Master Musician of India LP in 1965 − one of Khan's seminal recordings.[13]

He performed in India and traveled extensively in the West. In 1956, Khan founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta, with the mission to teach and spread Indian classical music. He founded another school of the same name in Berkeley, California in 1967 and later moved it to San Rafael, California.[10] Khan performed in Boston with Shankar Ghosh in 1969 for the Peabody Mason Concert series. In 1985 he founded another branch of the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland. Khan was the first Indian musician to record an LP album of Indian classical music in the United States and to play sarod on American television.[14]

Khan has participated in a number of classic jugalbandi pairings, most notably with Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee and violinist L. Subramaniam. A few recordings of duets with Vilayat Khan also exist. He also collaborated with Western musicians. In August 1971, Khan performed at Madison Square Garden for the Concert for Bangladesh, along with Ravi Shankar, Alla Rakha and Kamala Chakravarty; other musicians at the concert included George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. A live album and a movie of the event were later released.[1][10]

Illness and death

Khan was based in the United States for the last four decades of his life. He toured extensively until he was prevented from doing so by ill health in the period up to his death from renal failure.

Personal life

Ali Akbar Khan married three times (first Zubeida Begum, then Rajdulari Khan Sahiba, and last one Mary Khan), and is survived by eight sons and four daughters. Six of his children and one grandson are musicians: Aashish Khan Debasharma (b 1939, sarod), Dhyanesh Khan (1941–90; sarod), Ameena Perrera (Sitar), Pranesh Khan (tabla), Rajesh Khan (sarod), Alam Khan (b 1982, sarod), Manik Khan (Sarod); and his grandson, Shiraz Ali Khan (sarod).

Awards

Khan was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1967[15] and the Padma Vibhushan in 1989,[16] among other awards. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.[10] In 1997, Khan received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honour in the traditional arts. Khan has received five Grammy nominations.[17]

Discography

With John Handy:

Notes

  1. 1 2 Grimes, William (19 June 2009). "Ali Akbar Khan, Sarod Virtuoso of Depth and Intencity, Is Dead at 87". New York Times. Retrieved 20 June 2009.
  2. ↑ "50 Most Influential Indian Americans". Rediff.com. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  3. ↑ Rappaport, Scott. "Ali Akbar Khan Endowment for Indian Classical Music". UC Santa Cruz.
  4. ↑ "Padma Awards". Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India). Retrieved 8 March 2009.
  5. ↑ "Sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan passes away at 87". Sify News. Asian News International (ANI). 19 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009.
  6. 1 2 Lavezzoli 2006, pp. 51–52
  7. 1 2 3 Lavezzoli 2006, pp. 53–55
  8. ↑ Massey 1996, p. 142
  9. ↑ Thomason, Robert E. (20 June 2009). "Bengali Musician Ali Akbar Khan Dies at 87". The Washington Post.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Thomason, Robert E. (19 June 2009). "Sarod Virtuoso Ali Akbar Khan Dies at 87". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 June 2009.
  11. ↑ "Soul-stirring strains". The Hindu. Chennai, India. 26 June 2011. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
  12. ↑ "Ali Akbar Khan biography". AMMP. Archived from the original on 20 June 2009. Retrieved 20 June 2009.
  13. ↑ Lavezzoli 2006, pp. 55–56
  14. ↑ "Ali Akbar Khan: Many firsts to his credit". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Press Trust of India (PTI). 19 June 2009. Archived from the original on 22 June 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009.
  15. ↑ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  16. ↑ "Sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan passes away". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Press Trust of India (PTI). 20 June 2009.
  17. ↑ "Ali Akbar Khan dies at 87; sarod player helped bring Indian music to U.S.". 20 June 2009.

Further reading

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