A life in music

SANDIP ROY, Jun 19, 2009

This article was published in the April, 2002 issue of the magazine. We reprint it today in the memory of Swara Samrat Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, who passed away peacefully on Thursday evening, surrounded by friends and family. Khansahib had been a dialysis patient since 2004, and had been enduring numerous health issues ever since, according to sources at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music, located in San Rafael, California.

"Sing like handwriting," admonishes Ali Akbar Khan. "You are singing like a typewriter." It's evening and class is in full swing at the Ali Akbar College of Music. Khansahib has not been keeping too well. But he is at class and 25-30 students are gathered around him on the bright green carpet. They have all touched his feet before they sat down. But reverence does not count for excuses in a lesson with Ali Akbar Khan. "If you can't sing in tune," he tells a hapless student, "no one can help you. Out of tune is out of tune. It's like a color. You can't change my color."

A life in music

SANDIP ROY, Jun 19, 2009

This article was published in the April, 2002 issue of the magazine. We reprint it today in the memory of Swara Samrat Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, who passed away peacefully on Thursday evening, surrounded by friends and family. Khansahib had been a dialysis patient since 2004, and had been enduring numerous health issues ever since, according to sources at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music, located in San Rafael, California.

Soon Ali Akbar Khan ended up at the court of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. However that, too, was at his father's behest. "At that time I was working for Indian radio in Lucknow as music director. My father was in Jodhpur and the King of Jodhpur wanted him to stay. My father called me to Jodhpur and I don't know what happened between them but he told me to leave my job in Lucknow." It was at Jodhpur that this twenty-something year-old youth was anointed Ustad. "In those days you could not just call yourself Ustad," says Khansahib. "In those days they had to call a big meeting of nine members who decide whether this person can be called ustad or not. Then they made an announcement all over the state." The accolade was a great honor but an almost greater embarrassment. He remembers when his father heard it he just laughed. "I remember my father would sometimes come to music conferences in Calcutta. I would go to meet him and he would tell his followers 'Look, look the Ustad of Jodhpur is coming. Stand up, stand up.' It was very embarrassing."

But what was also happening was the young Ustad of Jodhpur was coming out of the shadow of his giant of a father and trying to leave his own footprints behind. One of the ways in which he gently rebelled was to try his hand at composing film music. His score for Kshudito Pashan (Hungry Stones) based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore won him great acclaim. But there were several others like Satyajit Ray's Devi, Chetan Anand's Aandhiyan and Merchant Ivory's Householder. His father did not approve of the "atmosphere" of the film world and told him that line was not a good one for him. But Ali Akbar Khan says, "I have done movies only for poor and middle class people like taxi drivers, rickshaw-wallas who never paid attention to music conferences. They always say 'Oh my God—all that is pukka gaana.' But they went to films. That way at least people will go to see the movie and due to that to that they can get this chance to hear classical music and get over their fear of pukka gaana. Nowadays taxi drivers, porters, buy tickets and attend music conferences."

Meanwhile Indian classical music was slowly coming to the attention of the West. Yehudi Menhuin heard both Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar and was enthralled. He invited Khan to America in 1955 and he played at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and appeared on Alistair Cooke's Omnibus program. Soon he had made the first Western LP of Indian classical music as well. However when it came to settling down in America, he looked not to New York, the cultural capital, but to the West Coast. He remembers that he did originally think about New York but felt, "it was too big for me. It was a city where people were busy all the time, where I would not have a home life."

Bengali Musician Was 'An Absolute Genius'

Ali Akbar Khan, 87, a Bengali musician who was regarded as one of the finest artists of Indian classical music who helped popularize the genre in the West through appearances on television, record and stage, died June 18 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif., of a kidney ailment.

As Indian culture and music began to infuse Western pop culture in the 1960s, widespread interest in musicians such as Mr. Khan grew. In 1967, he established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley, Calif., which he later moved to Marin County, north of San Francisco. He taught there while maintaining a schedule of performances and recordings such as "Shree Rag" and "Misra Piloo," both of which brought him critical acclaim.

In 1971, a civil war transformed Mr. Khan's homeland, called East Pakistan at the time, into the independent country of Bangladesh. The war created an immense humanitarian crisis among the already poor population. Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison, a student and performer of Indian music, assembled a number of musicians for a relief benefit concert held at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Mr. Khan and Shankar, whose divorce from Mr. Khan's sister strained their relationship, performed at the Concert for Bangladesh with musicians including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. An album and film of the concert were later released.

In an interview many years later, Mr. Khan said he had bad memories of the Madison Square Garden event. "That was not music but I'd say a war of music," he told Reuters in 2007, adding at one point he stuffed toilet paper in his ears to block out the noise.

Mr. Khan was born April 14, 1922, in British-controlled East Bengal, now Bangladesh. His family claimed a musical lineage that stretched back to a 16th-century court musician of the Mogul Emperor Akbar.

His father, Allauddin Khan, was regarded as one of the foremost Indian musicians of his time and had reportedly mastered more than 200 instruments. He said his father, who lived to be more than 100 and also taught Shankar, was "very strict. He never played with me, he never laughed, never smiled. He was a tiger. I wanted love from him. . . . The motive was that if you show that, too much love, then I was spoiled. At that time I was very angry, but now I am grateful."

The younger Khan debuted publicly at 13 and as a young man earned the designation "ustad," or master musician. He went on to compose his own ragas, a striking accomplishment because ragas are typically handed down by tradition. Over the years, Mr. Khan also composed scores for Indian films such as Satyajit Ray's "Devi" (1960) and the early Merchant-Ivory collaboration "The Householder" (1963).

Survivors include his wife, Mary, and 11 children from several previous wives. He said that in writing his family history, he surprised Mary when he admitted to a marriage that lasted a day. He called it "an accident. I didn't like the lady at all."

In 1991, Mr. Khan received a MacArthur Fellowship, widely known as the "genius" grant. He later received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

He once wrote of the sarod, "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."

Maestro Ali Akbar Khan.

TEED ROCKWELL, Jul 02, 2009

Swara Samrat Maestro Ali Akbar Khan passed away peacefully on June 18, 2009, surrounded by his family. Khansahib (as he was affectionately and respectfully addressed) had been a dialysis patient since 2004, and had been enduring numerous health issues ever since. He continued teaching publicly at the Ali Akbar College until just weeks ago, and taught music at home until the day he died.

The tributes to Khansahib have rightly stressed that he was a musical genius of the stature of Beethoven and Mozart. However, we in the Bay Area are especially grateful for another of his great accomplishments. This was not something he directly created, but rather something that he inspired in others. Students of Hindustani music came to the Bay Area solely because he was here—from Japan, South America, Europe, and even India. Other well-known Indian teachers followed, and the result was a community of thousands devoted to classical Indian music. Khansahib remained the central inspiration of this community for decades.

Khansahib was famous for his performances at the world’s greatest concert halls, and for his many recordings. Eight months of every year, however, he gave himself entirely to his students. We were constantly inspired by Khansahib's example of artistic dedication and compassionate patience, and anyone who tried to master the profound intricacies of his lessons was forever changed by that experience. These lessons contained centuries of tradition seamlessly interwoven with his unique genius. No one learned how to play them as well as he did, but everyone learned how to listen, and shared their enthusiasm with friends, and friends of friends.

The result was an audience for Hindustani music which was unmatched for both ethnic diversity and devotion to artistic excellence. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring to realize that this community can and must now go on without him. He was admired and loved, and will be greatly missed.

Khansahib is survived by his wife, Mary; seven sons, of whom Aashish and Alam Khan are sarod players; and four daughters.