Ali Akbar Khan

Ali Akbar Khan (14 April 1922Template:Snd18 June 2009) was an Indian 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, he also composed numerous classical ragas and film scores.<ref name="NYT Obit">Template:Cite news</ref> He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was an adjunct professor of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Khan was accorded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1989.<ref name=Padma>Template:Cite web</ref> Nominated five times for the Grammy Award, Khan was also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship.

Childhood and training

Ali Akbar Khan was born in the village of Shibpur, Brahmanbaria, in present-day Bangladesh, to musician and teacher, Allauddin Khan and Madina Begum.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name = Lav_child>Template:Harvnb</ref>

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.<ref name = Lav_early/> Khan also learned to play the tabla and the pakhavaj from his uncle, Aftabuddin Khan, who he visited at Shibpur.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name = Lav_child/>

Of his training on the sarod, he wrote: Template:Blockquote

Career

File:Ali Akbar Khan 2014 stampsheet of India cr.jpg

Khan on a 2014 stamp sheet of India

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.<ref name = Lav_early>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1943, on his father's recommendation, Khan was appointed a court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Umaid Singh.<ref name=TWP090619>Template:Cite news</ref> 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 Maharaja Hanwant Singh died in a plane crash in 1952, Khan moved to Bombay.<ref name = Lav_early/>

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.<ref name=hindu>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name="AMMP bio">Template:Cite web</ref>

Beginning in 1945, Khan also started recording a series of 78 rpm disks (which could record about three minutes of music) at the His Master's Voice 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.<ref name = Bombay>Template:Harvnb</ref>

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.<ref name=TWP090619/>Template:Better source needed 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.<ref name=TH090619>Template:Cite news</ref>

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; he taught Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and, by extension, Bill Kreutzmann. 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.<ref name = "NYT Obit"/><ref name=TWP090619/>

Personal life

Khan was married three times and had at least 11 children, including sarod players Aashish Khan, Alam Khan, and Manik Khan.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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. He had been a dialysis patient since 2004. He died from kidney failure at his home in San Anselmo, California on 18 June 2009, at age 87.<ref name="latimes"/>

Awards

Khan was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1967<ref name="Padma Awards">Template:Cite web</ref> and the Padma Vibhushan in 1989,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> among other awards. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991,<ref name=TWP090619/> the first Indian musician to receive the so-called "genius grant".<ref name="latimes"/> In 1997, Khan received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honour in the traditional arts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Khan received five Grammy nominations over the course of his life.<ref name="latimes">Template:Cite news</ref> In September 2014, a postage stamp featuring Khan was released by India Post commemorating his contributions.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Selected discography

Solo albums:

• Sound of the Sarod: Recorded in Concert (World Pacific) (recorded in LA, c1962)
• The Classical Music of India (Prestige, 1964)
• Bear's Sonic Journals: That Which Colors the Mind (Owsley Stanley Foundation, 2020)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

With Ravi Shankar:

• The Master Musicians of India (Prestige, 1964)

With John Handy:

• Karuna Supreme (MPS, 1976)
• Rainbow (MPS, 1981)

Cited sources

• Template:Cite book

External links

• Template:AllMusic
• Template:IMDb name
• Ali Akbar College of Music