Indian musician Ali Akbar Khan (born 1922) is venerated in his homeland as a National Living Treasure, while internationally he is regarded as the greatest living classical Indian musician. A master of the sarod, a 25-stringed Indian instrument, Khan helped introduce and popularize Indian music throughout the Western world.
Khan was born on April 14, 1922, in Shivpur, East Bengal, an area now known as Bangladesh but then part of British-controlled India. He began learning and playing music when he was three years old. He was taught by his father, the late Padma Vibhusan Acharya Dr. Allauddin Khan, who is regarded as the most important figure in North Indian music of his time. The elder Khan played over 200 instruments and lived to be 110 years old. Regarded as both a great musician and teacher, Allauddin Khan attracted a great many aspiring Indian musicians who wanted to learn from the master.
Khan's family followed the rich tradition of North Indian classical music that had developed over 4,000 years and was based on ancient principles of rag (melody) and taal (rhythm). The family dates its ancestry back to Mian Tansen, a 16th-century court musician to the Mogul Emperor Akbar.
Allauddin Khan, who also mastered Western and African instruments during his career, continued teaching his son right up until his death in 1972. He also taught his daughters, Sharija, Jehanara, and Annapurna, and instructed many other famous musicians, among them the illustrious sitarist Ravi Shankar, flautist Pannalal Ghosh, and Ali Akbar Khan's own son sarodist, Aashish Khan.
Ali Khan's musical training was rigorous. For more than 20 years, starting at age three, he practiced every day for 18 hours a day. In an interview with V. R. Rao posted on the Cyberabad Web site, Khan explained that he learned music like a child learns language. "I didn't consciously want to learn music. It was more like a language that an infant learns," he said.
Khan's early musical education included a variety of string and percussion instruments including the sarod, sitar, sursingar, pakhavaj, rabab, and violin. In addition to the instruction from his father, Khan also learned vocals from his sister Jehanara and percussion from his uncle, Fakir Aftabuddin. Eventually, his father recommended that he focus on the sarod, an ancient steel-clad member of the lute family at least 2,000 years old with 25 strings and played with a bow. The sarod, Khan's father said, could fulfill 200 instruments in one.
Success Came Early
Khan made his first public performance, in Allahabad in 1935, when he was only 13 years old. At the same time, he began composing his own music under his father's direction. His skill was such that, when he was still a teenager, Khan was scheduled to accompany his father on a tour of Europe and America. However, the plans were canceled because Khan did not like the idea of being away from his mother, and he was not practicing his music as much as his father felt he should. The elder Khan cut his tour short and returned to India, to make sure his son practiced 15 to 18 hours a day.
In 1938 Ravi Shankar began studying with Allauddin Khan in Maihar and, in 1941 he married his teacher's daughter, Ali Khan's sister Annapurna, who was then considered to be the premiere player of the surbahar, a deeper-toned, heavier relative of the sitar, which was Shankar's chosen instrument. Ali Khan studied along with his now-brother-in-law Shankar and, thanks to the guidance of Alluddin Khan, the two musicians became highly regarded in Hindustani music circles for their duets.
In 1943, when he was 21, Khan was appointed court musician to the maharaja of Jodhpur. Khan held this position until the maharaja died several years later. The state of Jodhpur bestowed on the young musician the title of "Ustad," or master musician. At first, Khan's father was amused that his son would receive such a high honor at such an early age. However, later in life, Allauddin Khan told his son that he had been extremely proud of him. Then, to show his pleasure and respect, he gave his son the title of "Swara Samrat" or "emperor of melody." Of all the honors that he received in his life, Ali Khan would value that one the most.
During the 1940s Khan also made his first sound recordings, and he began his own career as a teacher, instructing Maharajah Hanumantha Singh. New opportunities opened up when he met world famous violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin at a recital in Delhi in 1952. Menuhin, who would call Khan one of the greatest musician in the world, was so impressed that he encouraged the young man to perform in the West. This resulted in Khan's first trip to the United States in 1955, when he appeared in a first-of-its kind concert at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In addition, he appeared on Alistair Cooke's Omnibus television show, marking the first time Indian music was performed live on television. Khan's appearance had an enormous impact. It opened the door to Western acceptance of Indian music, an acceptance that reached full bloom in the 1960s, due, in large part, to the embracement of Indian music by the so-called "counterculture." However, at that time, Indian music and culture seemed alien to many Americans. "When I came in '55, because I was in Indian dress, people on the street in New York came out of the bars and shops and followed us," Khan remembered in an interview with Neela Banerjee for Asian Week. "They asked me, 'Who are you? Where are you from?' When I said 'India,' some of them didn't even know where it was. Or others who knew I was a musician asked funny questions like, 'How can you play music in India with all the tigers and snakes and monkeys you have to fight off?'"
In 1955 Khan also released his first Western recordings of Indian classical music, titled Music of India and Morning and Evening Ragas. The following year he established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta, India. During the same decade Khan first began composing music for films, an activity he engaged in throughout his career. He composed his first score in 1953 for Aandhiyan, a film by Indian filmmaker Chetan Anand. Later, he would compose music for Devi (1960), by internationally acclaimed Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray; The Householder, (1963), the first film directed by the celebrated team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory; and Little Buddha, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Opened Music School
Throughout the 1960s, Khan continued recording music and releasing recordings. In 1963 and 1966 he received the President of India Award. In addition, acting upon the influence of his father, who had taught him the value of teaching music, he established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley, California, in 1967, and moved the school to a new location in Marin County two years later. For a long time, he had attempted to set up a school in his homeland, with little success. "For thirty years I struggled to establish a teaching institution in Calcutta," he told Rao. "But it wasn't possible. No response."
By the mid-1960s the West was receptive to listening to and learning about Indian music. A large part of the general public had became aware of Indian music due to the interest in the form by popular rock musicians, such as George Harrison of the Beatles and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, both of whom integrated Indian instrumentation into their own compositions. The essence of Indian music fit well with the times, and many in the youth movement were willing and ready to explore ideas that were either ancient, revolutionary, exotic, or esoteric.
Complex in form, Indian music is also spiritual and contemplative. Although a performer, Khan sees himself more as a listener and as an extension of his sarod, and he can lose his sense of self while performing. Indian music, he explained to Rao, "is like a meditation, like going to temple. Music makes your heart very, very, very clear. You can feel what is peace, what is friendship, what is love, what you can do for others. Even when you hear, it is like fresh air, clean water - even if you don't understand it, when you hear it, it is pure."
The West Embraced Indian Music
By the mid-to late 1960s classical Indian musicians such as Khan and Shankar were appearing at U.S. and U.K. music festivals, including the ground-breaking Monterey Pop Festival in San Francisco in 1967 and the first Woodstock music festival held in Bethel, New York, in 1969. In fact, Indian music became a staple at such events, while also gaining its largest mass-audience exposure with The Concert for Bangladesh, a documentary film of a musical benefit organized by Harrison to raise funds for the starving people of that country. The performing lineup included some of the most famous rock stars of the era including Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Leon Russell as well as Shankar, who was accompanied for the event by Khan, Alla Rakah, and Kamala Chakravarty. (For his own concerts, Khan was most often accompanied by Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri on the tabla and son Alam on the sarode.)
During this period, Khan's fame on the international circuit was second only to that of Shankar due to Shankar's longer association with the Beatles. While Shankar had by now divorced Khan's sister, Annapurna, Shankar remained a disciple of Allauddin Khan. Shankar and Khan performed together for the final time at Montpellier, France, in July of 1985. Despite many pleas and generous offers, they never performed together again.
Honors and Awards Accumulated
In 1971 Khan received a Gold Disc award for his appearance on the bestselling Concert for Bangladesh album. The previous year, he earned a Grammy nomination for the recording Shree Rag. In 1973 and 1974 he received doctor of literature degrees from the Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta, India, and the University of Dacca in Bangladesh, respectively.
In 1979 Khan started his own recording label, Alam Medina Music Productions label, named after his son. Throughout the next decade his recorded output was prolific. He released six albums in 1980, three in 1981, and four in 1982. In 1983, the year he released two more albums, he was again nominated for a Grammy award, this time for Misra Piloo. The following year he released four more albums and received a doctor of letters degree from the University of Delhi, India. From 1985 to 1986 Khan released nine more albums.
In addition to recording, Khan invested time in teaching. In 1985 he opened a new branch of his music school in Switzerland. In 1988, the year he produced his first music video, he received the Padma Vibhusan award, which is the highest honor presented to a civilian in India. He continued amassing honors and awards throughout the 1990s, in 1991 alone receiving the Kalidas Sanman award from the Madya Pradesh Academy of Music and Fine Arts as well as an honorary doctorate degree in arts from the California Institute of the Arts. He also became the first Indian musician to receive a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. The following year, he received the Mahatma Gandhi Cultural Award in London. In 1993 he was honored with the titles of Hathi Saropao and Dowari Tajeem during the Jodhpur Palace's Golden Jubilee Celebration, and also received the Bill Graham Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bay Area Music Awards Foundation.
Established Akbar Foundation
In 1994 Khan founded the Ali Akbar Khan Foundation to fund the Baba Allauddin Khan Institute, a library and archive dedicated to the preservation of his own compositions as well as his father's. This large-scale archiving project involves more than 30,000 compositions, including more than 10,000 compositions from the 16th through the 20th centuries. Khan's wife, sons, and students have joined their efforts to convert collections of music from old reel-to-reel tapes to digital master tapes.
In 1997, the year Khan celebrated his 75th birthday, he received the prestigious National Heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The presentation was made at the White House by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. That same year Khan became the second recipient, after filmmaker Satyajit Ray, to receive the Asian Paints Shiromani-Hall of Fame Award. In August of 1997, to celebrate the 50th year of India's independence, Khan performed at the United Nations in New York and at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at the request of the Indian Embassy.
Khan received yet another doctorate degree in 1998, this one from the Viswa Bharati University in Shantiniketan, India. He also received the Indira Gandhi Gold Plaque from the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. That same year, Willie L. Brown Jr., mayor of San Francisco, proclaimed October 18th "Ustad Ali Akbar Khan Day." In 1999 Khan was appointed adjunct professor to the Department of Music at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In this position he gave concerts and conducted classes and workshops. He also advised the Arts Division in developing courses and resources in classical music of India.
In 2002, to celebrate his life and times, Khan performed an 80th birthday concert at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. He was accompanied by his 20-year old son Alam and tabla player Swapan Chaudhuri. Also that year, he received an honorary degree in musical arts from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Like his father before him, Khan has continued teaching and performing, although he gradually has cut down on his public performances. Also like his father, much of Khan's time is devoted to teaching his son, Alam.
Periodicals
Asian Week, January 11, 2002.
Online
"Ali Akbar Khan," Indian Classical Music Society Web site,http://www.icmschicago.org/Artists/ali_akbar.html (December 18, 2003).
"Ali Akbar Khan," MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music,http://www.musicweb.uk.net/encyclopaedia/k/K42.HTM (December 18 2003).
"Ali Akbar Khan - A Musical Giant," RanchoVila.com,http://www.ranchovilasa-spurs.com/aliakbarkhan.html (December 18, 2003)
Official Ali Akbar Khan Home Page,http://www.ammp.com (December 18, 2003).
"Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Great Indian Sarod Player" (interview), Cyberbad Web site,http://cyberabad.hypermart.net/index.htm (February, 1988).
