Singing Through The Sitar

"Beta!" cried Husain as he folded the boy into a fierce hug. 'Are you really my guru's son? What brings you here? Alone? In this state?"

But neither to Husain nor later to AIR's director-general Z.A. Bokhari would the boy admit anything more than that he was a truant. "If you try to send me back I'll run away again." With that he broke into sobs.

Bokhari was no run-of-the-mill bureaucrat. He decided to care for the fatherless child, to nurture and enrich his musical talent. After all, young Vilayat Khan was the scion of the Ittawa gharana whose stalwarts traced their line back to Tansen of Akbar's court. Bokhari not only provided shelter, clearing a garage for the child's quarters but engaged him as an AIR artiste at Rs. 10 a month. This was after he answered the question, "Can you play the sitar you are carrying around?" with an immediate burst of Bhairavi. Staff members gathered to listen. Senior sitarist Hyder Husain Khan of the Jaipur gharana exclaimed, 'Arey! Inayat Khan is still alive! Here, in this boyl"

The director also allotted two radio recitals a month to Vilayat's paternal uncle Wahid Khan (sitarist in Hyderabad) and maternal grandfather Bande Husain Khan (vocalist in Nahaan) to ensure their regular visits to Delhi to coach the boy Thus the youngster was trained simulta- neously to sing in the romantic khyal mode and to play the more traditional dhrupad ang in the instrumental style of the sitar and surbahar. He himself gave vocal and sitar recitals with equal felicity. "So you see, the khyal entered my head naturally and influenced my sitar playing. I also revelled in the whole gamut of light classical thumri, tappa, tarana, chaiti, barsati.......

Father Inayat Khan had died too early to have trained son Vilayat (born 1928) though the child had learnt enough to accompany him on the stage. But the father left a fire, constantly stoked by mother Bashiren Begum, daughter of a family of eminent vocalists in Saharanpur and Nahaan.

A sprightly 68 now, Vilayat Khan loved to indulge in the virtual reality of memories, of a past which anchored his growth, inspired his creative departures. "Too much tradition makes for dead wood. But I don't want so much progress as to lose my identity," he laughs as he details the changes he wrought on his own style and instrument through the patient years, until he made his strings replicate the vibrancy, versatility, continuity and the emotive range of the human voice.

Did he strike a new path because he was dissatisfied with the instrumental (tantrakari/gatkari) mode of his ancestors? "No, no," Khansaheb intervenes quickly. "Only Abdul Karim Khan was my father's equal in laydari (rhythm) and surilapan (sweetness). Till today I've not been able to play as perfectly as he did. Perhaps that's why I had to make my own style."

When friends and relatives jeered, "I vowed to myself I would not return until I proved to be a worthy son of my father." Khansaheb dashes a hand across his eyes as he recalls the pain of his father's death. It forced him to forge his path alone. With that he becomes the caring host of a winter morning on the lawns of "Surbahar" (MelodyGalore), his home in Dehradun. "Look beta, your tea is getting cold."

A birdcall arrests his hand-behind ear attention. "Such a tiny bird wit such a piercing song. It's asking "where are you?" He repeats the call in musical notes and taps the rhythm of rustling leaves. "I am lucky to have this beautiful, quiet retreat for four months in a year after tours in India and abroad. Ho long will it stay unspoilt? Already have more pollution, tourists, lorries .... the woods are gone."

"Surbahar" is bursting with life. Besides his disciples and younger so Hidayat, there are daughters Yaman, Zillah and toddler grandson holidaying in the Doon Valley. Puppies, kittens, chicks, ducklings and little serving boys scamper in and out, all managed by the placid Zubeida Begum, his second wife. The estates produce grain and oil, include a dairy, poultry farm, orchard, vegetable and rose gardens.

Vilayat Khan's facade of simple contentment hides a volatile temperament, artiste's ego, creative frenzy, eccentricity, and an astonishing range of interests from carpets and shawls to Mughal miniature paintings. Visitors are stunned by his collection of guns, pipes from England, China and Japan, crockery from the Czar's and the Kaiser's tables, iridescent cutglass from Venice, Turkey and Bohemia, chandeliers painstakingly assembled by the ustad himself. In his younger days Khansaheb had been an accomplished billiards player, horseman, swimmer and ballroom dancer.

He picks up a curiously shaped perfume bottle and inhales deeply. He opens his eyes - there are tears in them. "This belonged to an Egyptian queen of 2000 years ago. Here, smell it, aren't you in a different world now?"

Khansaheb may not remember what he played at the Festival of India in Britain (1951) but he is still wistful about the Jaguar XK 1 5 0 he brought back from that tripl And about every single car he ever owned. "When I was young I was mad about speed and had many near-fatal accidents. I don't like to think about it now. Loud clothes, big talk, craze for fame, fast driving - all these are signs of shallowness, of bad taste."

This self assessment is part of his musical growth. The old reviews reveal his penchant for showmanship. "He feels it in a sensitive manner but argues it out loudly," says one. But the natty dresser confesses, "I tried to wash out the bad parts, become clean, look good!"

He did arrive at a mature, multishaded, subtle delicacy and lingerin grandeur. "Whenever he managed t express exactly what he wanted, he would look heavenward," noted a later critic. The tributes came pouring in for "playing from the heart and singing through the sitar."

Sitarist Arvind Parikh, friend and disciple of 50 years, recalls the difficulties, and the humiliation Vilayat Khan underwent in crafting his original style." A Films Division documentary shows the unsure, pockmarked teenager, but there is nothing hesistant about his music. It was so advanced, the sounds he produced with his left hand were so unusual, that people denounced him as a thumri player, mistaking inventiveness for light music, intensity for virtuosity." Vilayat Khan reacted violently to the jibes. Once at a recital, he called out a senior critic by name to say, "Now let's see what's stronger - your pen, or my plectrum."

Those misunderstood essays were the beginning of Vilayat Khan's unique contribution to Indian classical music, the style of sitar playing now called Vilayatkhaani baaj. This is the gayaki ang or full fledged vocal style, which he innovated, perfected and passed on to a school of disciples. He wrought a total change in the dimension and impact of the music by modifying the base, frets, bridge and strings of the sitar. Only then could it handle the tremendous power of the right hand strokes, the long intricate oscillations, the lyrical fluidity, the itiurkis of khyal as well as the thuniri, exactly as the voice produced them. In short he gave a new direction to Hindustani music.

Khansaheb gets visibly enthused as he explains how he did it not in clinical terms but in bursts of singing ("Chandan phool banke daroon garwa"), interposed with "Suno!" (listen) and "Samjhe?" (got it).

Grandfather Bande Husain Khan's phrases were resplendent with glides, contours, modulations. His taans were labyrinths of superspeed where each note was looped with a tiny glide. The old techniques were incapable of replicating such vocal feats. And so Vilayat Khan crafted alternatives.

While remaining an unwavering traditionalist, Khansaheb absorbed everything that could enhance melody. He could refract in his Bhairavi gleams from the saxophon score of a Hollywood film ("Bathing Beauty") he had watched the day beforel He drew easily from folk music and the fervent Baul songs of Bengal.

Vilayat Khan slips into the vivid past again. Great artistes came to his father's haven in Calcutta. Abdul Aziz Khan from Patiala played the veena, so did Venkatagiriappa from Mysore. Alladiya Khan and Faiyyaz Khan sang, Shombhu Maharaj did abhinaya, and Balasaraswati danced to mother jayammal's song. "Oh, it was divine, Look, look at them! All enjoying the music and the food, some a swig of bhang in the corner. They are thrilled to be together. No one wants to show off, each become more humble. They bless me, they tweak my car as I imitate their music.......

His first memory of music?" I go back to 1932, to Albert Hall in Calcutta. My father enters, everyone rises to applaud him, even the British governor and his splendid retinue of lords and ladies. What a challenge to match Abdul Karim Khan who had sung before him. But my father casts a new spell. I fall asleep though I keep opening my eyes to see yellow, yellow every- where. "Silly childl" said my father to me the next morning. "That was the colour of raag Basant."

Failing thrice in class three, little Vilayat decided to stop schooling and play the sitar. The red eyed father roared, "Don't you know the sitar is a scorpion.?"

But the boy got his way. Here Khansaheb breaks into gleeful English. "Never I got shout after that. Never I got shout for the sitar!" His native gifts were burnished by the family tradition of fanatical practice.

The mood changes after lunch indoors. Vilayat Khan launches into a tirade against compromise and adulteration of music. The ustad had made dramatic exits when the audience got unruly. He refused to allow speech making by the President of India in the middle of a concert. "Let him do it at the start or finish. Music is not so cheap. I don't play for people who can't take my music. I don't want to play the Moonlight sonata or "We shall overcome" or some film song!"

The ustad knows that younger musicians have to grapple with steep falls in taste, but will not condone playing to the gallery. "Let them go to film music and make more money there than in classical music," he growls. (His own scores for Satyajit Ray's 'Jalsaghar' and Merchant Ivory's 'The Guru' have been adamantly classical). Then he repeats his boast, "I am the highest paid musician in this country." This childishness goes back to the fears and insecurities of his growing years.

"Your soul will abuse you if you indulge in fusions of American and Indian orchestras, join rock festivals, pretend to invent new raags to fool the people, or play on two violins with a single bow," he adds. jugalbandis were all right if done sportingly. As for his own bitter, competitive, revengeful displays with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, "I shudder to think of them."

He decries showy drumming for the same reason. 'All this sawaljawab razzmatazz which Ravi Shankar introduced, why, the sitarist performs, the drummer perl'orms, even the audience performs! Alla Rhakhaji and Zakir Husain dare not do it with me. If anyone tries tricks. I make him sweat. Once Kumar Bose said that playing tabla for me was death. He could not give the beat for a simple gat I played in teen taal!"

Radio and television are denounced next. "They club us with snake charmers and bear baiters as entertainers. They spend a fortune on cricket, give a pittance to musicians!" He boycotted AIR in protest against its audition policy. He refused every award from the Indian government, rejected the Sangeet Niitak Akiidemi award at age 37 because its selections were "arbitrary, indiscriminate and based on considerations other than merit."

It is but natural for Khansaheb to cry out against institutional teaching of music with its diplomas and degrees. In other words. passports to jobs which degrade the art and listeners' taste.

Khansaheb as a teacher? laughs Parikh: "Don't expect system and method. If you are alert you can unlock Alladin's treasures. He would stop you and say, "You haven't fixed the sa and you go to pa ' , Don't say "I felt like it." In music everything must be reasoned out." Or he'd suggest "Use the middle finger to stress the glide. Draw the ma from sa for Malkauns. from ga for Bageshri..."

Son and sitarist Shujaat Khan's response blends gratitude and resentment. " 15 times you play a phrase and go wrong once, he'd still whack you across the knuckles until you wanted to throw the sitar and run away. Many did just that. The pressure was unbearable." The father would tell family stories of comniitted riyaz - of how grandfather Imdad Khan did not get up till he finished his practice of paltas even when he heard his daughter had died. Such tales did more to terrify than to inspire the student!

Among disciples who survived are brother Imrat Khan, sons Shujaat and Hidayat, nephews Nishat, Irshad and Shahed Parwez, as also Arvind Parikh, Benjamin Gomez, Kalyani Roy. Nikhil Banerji and Rais Khan came for classes. Purvi Mukherji and Shubhra Guha are his students of vocal music.

We are on the terrace now, with low clouds flitting through the lissom trees around us. The ustad breaks into raag Gaarii on request. Melody flows like liquid gold. And you wonder. with a lump in your throat, why he ever gave up singing which seems the most natural thing for him to do. Don't his audience long for those snatches of song in his concerts, not quite being able to tell when voice ends and strings begin '

When he replies, the tone is tremulous with a grief of long ago. "I could do things with my voice that could never be done on the sitar. That's when my mother stabbed me to the core. She said I must give up singing. I obeyed unquestioningly. Years later she disclosed the reason. "I come from a clan of vocalists. If you become a singer I would have been condemned as disloyal to the family of instrumentalists into which I married. How could I face your father and grandfather in the next world(' So you see...

Earlier she had banned the family instrument - the surbahar - for him, reserving it for younger son Imrat, who needed that concession from his more gifted elder brother.

Khansaheb is lost in a reverie. Who knows what images cloud his mind - of himself training his younger brother, their duo performances for decades on sitar and surbahar, until an iron wall grew to block all contact between them. Rebel son Shujaat Khan, now reconciled with his father, is rueful about it. "Father is a genius, the lion's share of the "wah-wahs" went to him. This must have hurt my uncle. Moreover, father demanded complete submission. I remember the good times when father, uncle, myself and cousin Nishat played together before a delighted Calcutta audience. But in the last ten years the estrangement between the brothers has been total. "

Shujaat discloses that Khansaheb demands sycophancy from family and friends, and control of everyone's orbit. He could be as possessive as he was loving and generous. "That's why his first marriage broke up. My mother Monisha was a college educated brahmin, too independent to kow tow to the great man. Presumably she fell in love with his good looks and winsome ways onthe dance floor. She left him after three children and years of bickering... "

It is in keeping with his nature that Vilayat Khan should insist on staying an unflinching purist, and still yearn for the mass addition showered upon his lifetime rival Ravi Shankar 'As a gharana musician with mastery of technique and outstanding creativity, Vilayat Khan is aware he stands head and shoulders above every living musician today," says Parikh. "flow can it not gall him that Ravi Shankar has greater national and international recognition? One-upmanship and acrimony have marred their genuine respect for each other."

Shujaat agrees but gives other reasons. "Father admits that but for Ravi Shankar, who was there for him to practise to excel? Their rivalry charged and spurred him to greater heights."

The slanting rays paint the sky in twilight hues. The birds return to make garden symphonies. Lighting a bidi from his ornate silver box, the sitar samrat hums a pahadi dhun, free from the burdens of celebrityhood and the safety mask. That's when you ask him, "What are your happiest moments at home,"

Catching sight of the little boy clearing the teii things he says, 'At night all these garhwali children from the servants' quarters come to my room. We talk, laugh and sing together. What we gharana musicians take an hour to build up - that same raag and ras, why. these children can do it in a split second, just like that! I feel a rapture then..."

That is Vilayat Khan, unpredictable, quicksilvery. In whom elegance vies with ruthlessness, kindess with aggression. A life long rebel who cannot tolerate other protestors. Guardian of his heritage, and innovator supreme. A musician's musician. The future will rate him as a great son of' fndiii who epitomised his country's living culture in an uncompromising search for excellence.

Ustad Vilayat Khan: The orthodox revolutionary

Epochal artists provoke only adulation or criticism during their lifetimes. The interpretation of their art and their contribution begins only after they have departed from the scene. This is proving to be true of Ustad Vilayat Khan (1927-2004). This essay is a small contribution to this process. For the confidence with which I make my observations, I rely on four decades of training in the Vilayat Khan style of music, the intensive interaction I have had with the Ustad, a study of a substantial archive of his music, and decades of tutelage with the eminent scholar-musician, Pt. Arvind Parikh, the Ustad's most senior disciple.

The personality

Vilayat Khan's was a personality shaped by the conviction that it was destined to leave its mark on the world. He would not have been happy with just being the greatest sitarist; he had to be amongst the all-time greats of Hindustani music. This set him on a path of passionate absorption of the tradition, unrelenting innovation and the pursuit of superhuman standards of perfection in the execution of his musical vision.

The burning ambition that powered Vilayat Khan's destiny was, partially, a reaction to the humiliations and privations suffered early in life. He had a very comfortable childhood as the elder son of Ustad Enayet Khan, court musician at Gauripur (now in Bangladesh). After he lost his father at the age of eleven, the most prosperous and eminent amongst his father's disciples denied him the training of his gharana (stylistic lineage), and abandoned the family to virtual destitution. This experience re-activated - after five generations - the Rajput (a warrior tribe) genes of Thakur Srujan Singh, the founder of his lineage. Vilayat Khan left Calcutta in his early teens in search of training and a career, and swore not to return until he had become India's foremost Sitarist.

These forces shaped Vilayat Khan into an essentially elitist musician. But, his was not an elitism of the snobbish category that makes music inaccessible to the majority. His repertoire was dominated by popular raga-s and tala-s, and always had a reasonable component of semi-classical music. His elitism made him place a premium on the approval of the cognoscenti, and made him averse to populism of every variety. He challenged his audiences with his elaborate architecture, richness of musical content, and sophisticated presentation.

Attempts have been made to portray Vilayat Khan as a representative of the romanticist movement in 20th century Hindustani music. Amongst instrumentalists, he was, without doubt, the peerless master of the romanticist genres. However, Vilayat Khan defies simplistic classification. He rendered profound music at the highest level of classicism and semi-classical and folk repertoire with heart-rending impact. Irrespective of the genre he performed, aloofness remained a basic quality of his music, as much as it was of his persona.

The Ustad often quoted the aphorism - "When you sit on the stage, perform with the authority of an Ustad. But, when you listen, no matter how insignificant the musician, listen with the receptivity of a disciple." He saw the artist as having a hotline to God, and artistic expression as a "Revelation," which audiences ought to receive in a spirit of reverence. The core of elitism in his personality never allowed him to drift towards titillation, populism or kitsch.

His aloofness and elitism were an integral part of the feudal values acquired in early childhood. He had grown up amongst the nobility, and valued their cultivation of the arts, as also their standards of propriety and decorous conduct. As a corollary, he had only contempt for the credentials of the democratic state as a patron of the arts, and for the crassness of the culture nourished by bourgeois capitalism after independence. He stuck steadfastly to his values, and willingly paid the price for so doing.

The presence

Ustad Vilayat Khan saw himself as an orthodox musician. The world of music, however, considers him a revolutionary musician. The clue to the mismatch of perceptions lies in that he was steeped in the vocalist tradition, while he expressed this commitment on the sitar. He revolutionized sitar music, which, until his father's era, had evolved as an extension of the traditional Rudra Veena idiom, though severely constrained in its melodic content by the instrument's limitations as an acoustic machine.

Circumstances drove Vilayat Khan into the orbit of vocalism during his most formative years. Consequently, he most wanted to sing, while family pride obliged him to become a sitarist. So, he did everything necessary to make the sitar sing. Vilayat Khan worked on the basic design of the sitar, its ergonomics, and its idiom to give it a new voice in Hindustani music. Vilayat Khan now enjoys so large a presence on the Hindustani music-scape, that it is difficult to determine which of the two traditions he hijacked - the vocal or the instrumental.

Formative influences

Vilayat Khan is inconceivable without Enayet Khan. However, Enayet Khan is far from sufficient to explain Vilayat Khan. Vilayat Khan was largely a self-taught musician, who built a magnificent edifice of esthetically coherent music out of inputs from various sources.

Young Vilayat Khan had received only five or six years of training when his father departed. But, by then, he had already recorded two ragas on 78 RPM disc in the thoroughbred technique and idiom of his father. However, by the time of Enayet Khan's departure, sitar music was poised for a great leap forward because of revolutionary changes in the acoustic environment and audience profiles. Only an instrumentalist unfettered by the sitarist tradition of those times could have achieved such a leap. In this sense, Vilayat Khan's personal tragedy turned out to be a historic event for the evolution of the sitar.

In the 1930s, the stranglehold of heredity over musicianship was such that it ruled out the grooming of Vilayat Khan by a sitarist from another gharana (stylistic lineage). Even the possibility of half a solution vanished when his father's disciples deserted him. Vilayat Khan's search for training took him to Nahan in Punjab, the home of his maternal grandfather, Ustad Bande Hassan Khan and uncle, Ustad Zinda Hassan Khan, both eminent Khayal vocalists. Though, in later years, he also studied the Surbahar under his father's brother, Ustad Waheed Khan, his years at Nahan were the most formative years of his life, and had the greatest impact on his evolution as a musician, because they cast Vilayat Khan's ideation process decisively into the vocalist mold. Traces of this influence were evident when Vilayat Khan sang, taught vocal music, and through the style of his Khayal compositions. Other vocalists, however, came later to dominate his vocalized idiom on the sitar.

The dominant influence on Vilayat Khan's musical vision came from Kirana maestros, Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan and Ustad Abdul Waheed Khan. He had memorized every single 78 RPM recording of Abdul Kareem Khan, and could render it verbatim. Vilayat Khan captured the essence of Abdul Waheed Khan's music through his principal follower, Ustad Ameer Khan. Ameer Khan, had also been influenced by Rajabali Khan of Dewas, whose music incorporated features of the Jaipur-Atrauli style of Ustad Alladiya Khan. In addition, Vilayat Khan greatly admired Ustad Faiyyaz Khan of Agra gharana, with whom he was on intimate terms. In addition to these major influences, Vilayat Khan adopted some features from the music of several other vocalists - Kesarbai Kerkar, Pt. Omkarnath Thakur, and Zohrabai Agrewali, to name a few. For his stroke-craft, he drew generously on the percussion idiom of the Tabla, the Pakhawaj, and even the Tasha and Nakkara, kettle-drums used as accompaniment to the Shehnai.

Vilayat Khan was not wedded to the musical values of any gharana except his own. His melodic imagination was not even as dependent on vocal music as is widely believed. He picked up musical ideas from every source that appealed to him, and integrated them into a style which was distinctively his own. His was an exceptional musical mind, aided by a photographic memory, which retained and processed musical inputs in a mysterious manner. One day, for instance, Vilayat Khan invited a beggar woman from the street to sing for him, paid her generously, and rendered her song as a bandish at a concert the next evening. Equally typical was the melodic idea he picked up from the chimes of the Big Ben in London, and adapted it as a composition in raga Hansadhwani for a concert the following day.

Vilayat Khan, the vocalist

In compliance with a promise he had given to his mother, Vilayat Khan never presented a full-fledged vocal concert. But, he did not entirely deprive his fans of his competence and charm as a vocalist. He made it a practice - in most concerts - to sing parts of his performance along with their rendition on the sitar. Vilayat Khan's fans vouch that if the Ustad did not sing even once in a concert, they felt cheated. He not only had the mind of a vocalist, but also a trained, authoritative voice.

He coached several students - amateur and professional - in vocal music. He had studied the styles of many 20th century masters of Khayal and Thumree and, though only in private, often did remarkably authentic impersonations of them. In his memoirs, The raga of my life, Arvind Parikh has recorded that shortly before her demise, Begum Akhtar, the empress of Ghazal and the semi-classical genres had started studying with the Ustad, and had wished to be formally initiated as a disciple. The contemporary Khayal maestro, Ulhas Kashalkar, sought the Ustad's guidance in his last years, and studied several of his raga creations and bandish-es with him.

Vilayat Khan, the surbahar player

In Ustad Vilayat Khan's gharana, musicians were routinely trained on the sitar as well as the surbahar (a magnified and bass version of the sitar). This tradition was a part of the 19th century practice of presenting the elaborate Rudra Veena/Dhrupad-style alap on the surbahar followed by post-Dhrupad bandish-es on the sitar. In this tradition, Vilayat Khan had studied the Surbahar with his father's brother, Ustad Waheed Khan. However, according to the Ustad, his mother prevailed upon him to cede the surbahar territory to his younger brother, Ustad Imrat Khan.

By and large, he respected this arrangement. As a result, both the instruments gained by having outstanding specialists from the same stylistic lineage. Vilayat Khan did, however, do at least one concert on the surbahar in Bombay in the late 1970s. Towards the end of his life, he also did two recordings - Kafi Kanada for India Archive Music, New York and Bilaskhani Todi for Navras Records, UK. The three recordings are proof of the command the Ustad had over the instrument.

His performing style on the surbahar moved away from the traditional Dhrupad idiom followed by his father and grandfather and was in tune with the stylistic orientations of the post-Dhrupad era. In conformity with the tradition, however, Vilayat Khan performed only the solo prelude (alap-jod-jhala) on the surbahar, and never performed percussion-accompanied music on the instrument.

Vilayat Khan, the duet artist

Vilayat Khan had a minor, but distinguished, presence as a duet artist. During the 1950's he did several memorable concerts with the sarod maestro, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, whom he admired immensely. He also launched a partnership with the violinist, Gajananrao Joshi, which turned out to be short-lived. During the 1960s, he released two LPs of duets with his brother, Ustad Imrat Khan, on the surbahar - Chandni Kedar and Miya-ki Malhar. Both are regarded amongst the finest pieces of instrumental music recorded in the latter half of the 20th century. Thereafter, the sitar-surbahar duet of the brothers was also featured sporadically on the concert circuit. Starting from the 1980s, Vilayat Khan occasionally performed duets with his son, Shujaat Khan, on the surbahar.

By far the most durable, and also successful, partnership the Ustad enjoyed was with the Shehnai maestro, Ustad Bismillah Khan. It was a reflection of their mutual affection and respect, as much as their parity in stature and compatibility as musicians. Their concerts were always sold out, and their recordings are prized collector's items.

Vilayat Khan and film music

Not surprisingly for an elitist musician - and much like classical music stalwarts of his generation - Vilayat Khan's formal involvement in film music was negligible. He composed and conducted the score for three feature films - Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar in Bengali, Merchant-Ivory Productions' The Guru in English, and Madhusudan Kumar's Kadambari in Hindi. In addition to these, he also gave music for a little known documentary film in Bengali produced by Dr. Barin Roy. The score for Ray's Jalsaghar won a national award.

The repertoire

Vilayat Khan's gharana has a tradition of specializing in a few raga-s for concert performance. His grandfather, Ustad Imdad Khan, for instance, became the most influential sitar and surbahar player of his times by concentrating on just two ragas: Yaman and Puriya. Likewise, his father, Ustad Enayet Khan, an equally influential sitarist, performed very few raga-s. The gharana has performed almost entirely in Teentala. Vilayat Khan's own repertoire of raga-s was probably larger than either of his immediate ancestors because he was addressing a larger and more diverse audience through a variety of media. He also stuck to Teental, except for a rare Khayal bandish rendered in Ektala. In semi-classical music, however, Vilayat Khan often performed in Dadra and Keherva.

Vilayat Khan sought greater and greater depth in the exploration of a limited range of mature melodic ideas rather than enlarge the span of coverage. In line with this philosophy, he never considered his musicianship adequate for rendering a particular raga. Pt. Arvind Parikh who has watched his Ustad practice for a concert, reports that Vilayat Khan tried out every phrase of a raga in a variety of ways until it delivered the desired melodic and acoustic result, and practiced it for as long as it took to perfect it before a performance. Only the flashes of spontaneous brilliance relied on chance. The hard core of every raga was subjected to serious exploration in isolation and ruthless preparation for punctilious execution.

An inventory of his raga repertoire has been compiled based on a survey of about 200 hours of concert and published recordings starting from 1950. Over 80% of his concerts and commercial recordings are of ragas currently classified as common or popular. About 15% may be considered rare. And, 5% of the ragas performed by him are those that the Hindustani (North Indian) music has recently adopted from the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition.

Not surprisingly, Vilayat Khan had little enthusiasm for creating new raga-s. He did, on occasion, experiment with idiosyncratic interpretations of mature ragas. Only two of them sustained his interest, and evolved towards some kind of independent raga-ness: Enayet Khani Kanada (initially named Vilayat Khani Kanada) and Sanjh Saravali. In the last two decades of his life, he explored these two "raga-s" with reasonable seriousness. Of the two, Sanjh Saravali is the more significant. With its seeds having germinated in the mid-1970s, Sanjh Saravali had a long history of sustained evolution. By the time the Ustad recorded it for India Archive Music in 1991, it had matured sufficiently to yield perhaps the greatest piece of instrumental music recorded in the latter half of the 20th century. In response to its creator's involvement in it, Sanjh Saravali acquired a following during his own lifetime. Ulhas Kashalkar, the distinguished contemporary vocalist, studied the raga with the Ustad, and started performing it. This development triggered off considerable interest in the raga amongst younger vocalists.

Starting from the 1980s, Ustad Vilayat Khan also found the Raga-Malika an increasingly convenient and popular means of ending a concert. The raga-base for the link-chain was most commonly Khamaj, but occasionally Piloo, and rarely Bhairavi. He rendered the Raga-Malika either in pure alap format or in alap and bandish format. He used this format to present glimpses of a variety of common ragas.

Amongst raga-s, Bhairavi remained his all-time favourite. He performed Bhairavi more frequently, and in more varied treatments, than any other raga. In fact, it can be said, that Vilayat Khan had a lifelong romance with Bhairavi.

The Gayaki Anga

The term "Gayaki Anga" refers to that facet of Ustad Vilayat Khan's music that enabled him to simulate the experience of vocalism in all phases of the rendition. The classification distinguishes his music from the "Tantkar Anga" (the idiom of the plucked instruments) which was performed on the Sitar until the era of his father, Ustad Enayet Khan. The "Tantkar Anga," being fundamental to the technology of music making on the sitar, can never be jettisoned. Any sitarist of stature has to be a master of the "Tantkar Anga" before he can do anything more with the instrument. If he decides to move towards vocalism, he can, at best, create an illusion of a vocal recital by transcending technical limitations. And, this is precisely what Vilayat Khan achieved.

Modern vocalism differs so fundamentally from the music of the plucked instruments, that it is impossible to identify all the elements that constitute this distinction. Vilayat Khan was a vocalist who wanted to sing on the sitar, and kept working at it all his life with ever growing success. He enabled the experience of sitar music to transcend the limitations of the technology of the instrument, and brought it closer to the acoustic, aesthetic and emotional richness of vocal music.

Vilayat Khan's vocalism shaped every element of his music - the architectural, sculptural, ornamentational, and acoustic. The architecture of Vilayat Khan's rendition of classical music most faithfully and meticulously follows the linear architecture of modern Khayal vocalism. This involves the progressive enhancement of melodic and rhythmic density and complexity without any regression. His choice and sequencing of improvisatory movements in the vilambit as well drut bandishes strictly follows the Khayal protocol, suitably adapted to exploit the distinctive features of the sitar. Vilayat Khan's melodic sculpture swung sharply towards Khayal style phrasing involving melodic continuity over two or more intervallic transitions. This was a major change from the staccato intonation and single-transition phrasing patterns of the traditional sitar idiom.

The influence of vocalism in Vilayat Khan's music was prominent in his alap. He adopted a narrative approach to the alap, inspired by the Merukhand (building-block) system of raga exposition evolved by Kirana gharana maestros. Arvind Parikh has described this feature of the Vilayat Khan alap as a "story-telling intimacy enriched with emotional meaning through variations of volume, timbre and pace." A part of this narrative approach was the subtle use of silences and the use of the Tanpura-substitute (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings) as a filler of silences.

Another prominent facet of vocalism is found in the Ustad's bandish-es (compositions). Although he continued to perform bandish-es in the traditional Masitkhani and Razakhani formats, Vilayat Khan made a radical departure by adapting Khayal and Thumree bandish-es for rendition on the sitar. In a few ragas, he also composed his own Khayal-style bandish-es. His own compositions in the vocalised style were first composed as Khayals, along with the poetic element, perfected as pieces of vocal music, and then adapted for the sitar. He demonstrated this process frequently by singing the bandish-es in concert, along with their sitar adaptations.

An important part of Vilayat Khan's vocalised idiom comes from his photographic memory. He has memorised so many Khayal renditions of the departed masters that echoes of their recordings - firmly etched in the memories of his audiences - are easily discernible in the Ustad's phrasing. His renditions thus acquired a haunting quality that often rendered his admirers sleepless after a concert. This nostalgia triggered off by his renditions became compelling in the Ustad's Thumree-style renditions. His study of the thumree tradition relied largely on his memory of early 20th century recordings. As recently as October 1991, at a concert in Los Angeles, he reproduced an entire Thumree rendering of Zohrabai Agrewali (Paani bhareri in Ghara) from a 78 RPM disc recorded more than half a century ago, accompanying his sitar rendering with his own voice.

In relation to the human voice, a crucial limitation of the sitar is in the communication of emotional values. The human voice communicates them effectively with the aid of variations in volume and timbre. In his attempts at singing on the sitar, Vilayat Khan evolved an entire science of acoustic manipulation of the sitar. The magic of his stroke-craft (right hand) remains the envy of every sitarist who has heard him. He used this magic not only to simulate the vocal expression, but also a variety of special effects - often imitating a Piano, Sarangi, and Shehnai - hitherto not heard on the sitar. A lot of this magic was painstakingly perfected. But, a lot of it was intuitive. I had queried him once on the special effects he had produced on a recording. His answer was: "I don't really know how these are produced. Over the years, I have built up a relationship with my instrument. I visualise the sound I want, and the instrument delivers."

The man-machine relationship

For involuntary processes to have taken charge of the Ustad's music - as they do in vocal music - he would have needed to weld his body and his instrument into a single unified musical machine. This is probably the most fundamental, and least understood, facet of Vilayat Khan's contribution to the art of the sitar. He had probably not reasoned out the precise logic of the ergonomics he evolved. But, it could be inferred from the manner in which he taught Arvind Parikh, whose analysis I present here. Vilayat Khan's basic tenet was that the entire body should be relaxed with the instrument in the sitarist's hand, and every movement should be natural.

The most significant ergonomic contribution of Vilayat Khan was perfecting the posture and the handling of the instrument. Vilayat Khan held the sitar exactly at an angle of 45 degrees to the floor on which the sitarist sits. This was a change from his father, Ustad Enayet Khan's posture, whose angle - judging from his photographs - was between 35 and 40 degrees to the floor. This change delivered an incredible enhancement in mechanical efficiency in bi-directional movement of both the hands - melodic execution as well as stroke-craft.

Vilayat Khan then reasoned that the torso should not have to lean on the right side to hold the tumba (chamber resonator) down. The elbow of the right hand should, therefore, be supported by the tumba of the sitar at a height at which the torso can remain upright. So, he increased the size of the tumba to achieve the desired level of comfort. This change also determined the distance of the sitar from the sitarist's body, and the point at which the stem of the sitar would rest on the right knee of the sitarist to achieve the 45 degrees angle. With this posture and handling, he ensured that the right hand felt no stress in holding down the tumba, and the left hand was not required to hold up the stem. As a result, the power of the forearm and palm muscles of both the hands could be deployed entirely for executing the music.

Vilayat Khan's ergonomic engineering redefined and standardized the grip of the instrument with respect to both hands, the stance of the right-hand palm while implementing the strokes, and the design and placement of the mizrab (wire plectrum) worn on the sitarist's index finger. All these changes had the result of maximizing mechanical efficiency, and control over the musical output, while minimizing stress on the muscles directly engaged in music making. He wanted to do with the sitar what no one before him had attempted, and found a way of making the instrument obey his commands. However for achieving total compliance, he also had to re-engineer the instrument

Re-engineering the instrument

Executing melody on the sitar is subject to two kinds of melodic discontinuity - that imposed by the frequency of left hand moving between frets, and that imposed by the frequency of sound priming by the right hand. Both these had to be minimized if Vilayat Khan was to simulate the aural experience of vocal music on the sitar. He had to get many more intonations under the impact of each stroke, while also ensuring a much greater sustenance of each intonation. The ratio of melodic density to stroke density had to be tilted sharply in favour of melodic density. In addition, the instrument had to be made capable of delivering a wider range of timbres than had hitherto been possible. A part of the solution to these problems was technique. But, the larger part of it had to be the instrument's ability to support the technique. These were the guiding considerations for Vilayat Khan's re-engineering of the instrument. But, once they were put in motion, a more comprehensive vision of the vocalized aural experience took charge of the process.

For executing the vocalized idiom, Vilayat Khan's first imperative was that the melodic execution should shift predominantly to string-deflection techniques, such as meend, murki and gamak. The Enayet Khan sitar rarely attempted meends of more than two or three tones pulled from the same fret. Complex seven or eight-tone murki-s and heavy gamak-s were absent from the Enayet Khan idiom. If any of these, or even a five-tone meend was attempted on the Enayet Khan sitar, the stress on the instrument would upset the tuning of all the strings. This consideration, and others related to string-deflection, received considerable attention from Vilayat Khan.

The first facet of this was the reinforcement of the instrument for greater stress-tolerance. Vilayat Khan increased the thickness of the tabli (the cover of the tumba), and of the tar-gahan (the channel on top of the instrument which carries the strings to the nuts). He also reinforced the joint between the tumba and the stem with steel bars to enable the instrument to withstand the additional stress of string deflection. The second facet of the re-engineering was enhancing the ability of the instrument to deliver a five-tone string-deflection. The Enayet Khan sitar had a slightly narrower stem, and relatively flat frets, with the strings running close to the surface of the frets. With the enlargement of the tumba by Vilayat Khan, the stem became slightly broader in proportion. But, the frets still did not provide sufficient surface area for a five-tone deflection. So, Vilayat Khan introduced frets of more prominent convexity, and increased the distance between the strings and the frets. These changes helped to create and support an idiom that relied predominantly on string deflection. There was, however, also an acoustic dimension to this. The thickness and metallurgical composition of the frets on the Enayet Khan sitar were not entirely hospitable to a meend-dominant style. So, Vilayat Khan made them thicker, and replaced the brass frets with those of an acoustically superior alloy.

The problem of acoustic sustain led to other changes. The larger tumba provided part of the solution. However, in the sitars of pre-Vilayat Khan design, the acoustic output generated by each stroke was deployed more in generating the volume than sustain. This required a change in design as well as technique. A part of the dissipation of acoustic output was taking place from the upper tumba, which was in use till Enayet Khan's time. In that era, devoid of electronic amplification, the upper tumba provided a useful booster to volume as well as delivery of harmonics. Vilayat Khan dispensed with the contraption, thus allowing the stem to function more efficiently as a column-resonator. His other solutions were at the stroke-production end of the instrument. He perfected fine-tuning the jawari bridge in such a manner that the acoustic output was subdued in volume as well as brightness, but richer in sustain. Along with this, his fine-tuning specifications gave him access to a wider range of timbres. This change also required changes in stroke-craft.

Along with experiments in stroke-craft, Vilayat Khan kept experimenting with different materials for forging the jawari bridge. In the 1970s, he dispensed with the traditional ivory bridge, and the deer-horn (its substitute) of the Enayet Khan era. Thereafter, he experimented with various hard-wood bridges, and even with some space-age polymers. In the last few years, he had settled down to using an ebony bridge, which gave him the best combination of stability and acoustic features. Although he did use the services of expert craftsmen to periodically rework the jawari bridge, he had mastered the technique, and could do it himself.

The distinctive sound of the Vilayat Khan sitar, however, is also the product of more obvious changes - those in the tuning of the strings. Vilayat Khan thus converted the traditional treble-and-bass sitar, modeled after the ancient Rudra Veena, into a pure treble sitar. The traditional sitar had seven strings running over the main bridge, and an effective melodic canvas of three and a half octaves. Vilayat Khan sacrificed one octave, and reduced the number of strings to six. He removed strings representing the lowest octave, and replaced them with strings tuned to the middle with a suitable combination reflecting the tonal geometry of the raga. These strings were not intended for executing melody, but to function as a chord-like filler of silences, over and above the chikari (drone strings) which performed this function partially. Vilayat Khan developed a style of deploying this chord-like device as a suggestion of Tanpura accompaniment. In addition to functioning as a Tanpura replacement, these strings provided a powerful reinforcement of the raga's psycho-acoustic character.

With these structural and tuning changes aimed at executing his vocalized vision of music, Vilayat Khan created an entirely new instrument with a distinctive sound and acoustic ambience. As a result, today, just the opening stroke on a Vilayat Khan style sitar is sufficient to identify a sitarist of the Vilayat Khan style.

The Vilayat Khan legacy

The legacy of a musician consists of his style, and his recordings. Judged on these facets of his legacy, Vilayat Khan ranks amongst the greatest musicians of the 20th century.

Vilayat Khan looms so large over the world of the sitar, that the gharana, named originally after his grandfather, Ustad Imdad Khan, may now legitimately be re-christened the "Vilayat Khani gharana." Today, followers of the Vilayat Khan style amongst sitarists outnumber those of all the remaining gharanas of sitar music. The sitar world is now dominated by the Ustad's brother, sons, nephews and disciples, along with other third generation disciples of his father, Ustad Enayet Khan, and of his uncle, Ustad Waheed Khan. Over and above the descendants and direct disciples of the Imdad Khan lineage, there is a large number of professional sitarists who have studied the Vilayat Khan style, and follow it without having been formally admitted into the gharana. The wave of "Khayal-isation" of instrumental music set in motion by Vilayat Khan has swept all of sitar music, and made significant inroads into the music of all the major instruments. Interestingly, young vocalists are also known to study Vilayat Khan's recordings, especially for his tan-s.

Though a comprehensive discography of the Ustad's published recordings is yet to be compiled, he is estimated to have released between 70 and 100 commercial recordings during his career spanning six decades. The existing archive of concert recordings in possession of his admirers is likely to exceed 400 hours of music. These recordings are amongst the most actively exchanged items in the grey market for live music. Digitally re-mastered versions of many of these recordings will certainly surface in the pre-recorded music market over the next few years. The National Centre for the Performing Arts persuaded the Ustad to do about 30 hours of lecture demonstration on his gharana's music in 1979. By special arrangement, this archive is available to the public for hearing. Although the Ustad stopped performing on All India Radio in 1952, AIR could be in possession of a sizeable Vilayat Khan archive, which could become publicly available one day.

Considering the totality of the Vilayat Khan legacy, his place in the history of music is comparable to the greatest amongst 20th century musicians like Abdul Kareem Khan, Faiyyaz Khan, and Alladiya Khan.

PARTHO DATTA

Ustad Vilayat Khan, 1924-2004.

USTAD VILAYAT KHAN slipped away quietly on the evening India won the first One Day International cricket match in Karachi. In the ensuing euphoria and self-congratulatory messages that flooded the media, this important news lay buried and surfaced a full day later. With his death an important era in music is almost drawing to a close. The great quartet who gave Indian instrumentalists a world reputation and infinite musical prestige has suffered another blow. Nikhil Bannerjee (1930-1986), the youngest in this group, passed away almost two decades ago. The elders, Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, both born in 1920, still continue to enrich the musical realm. In post-Independence India, such was the collective power of this quartet that it almost overturned the traditional hierarchy which accorded a higher position to vocal music.

AP

Vilayat Khan fully deserved to be called "Ustad", an honour that seems to come rather easily these days to young musicians. It was also in keeping with his own image as a traditionalist of yore with an impressive lineage to match. Like erstwhile nawabs and maharajahs, Vilayat Khan flaunted his grand pedigree without humility. Pictures of the maestro in flashy sherwanis with portraits of his elders in the background, adorn the covers of many of his LPs. He did have every reason to boast about his lineage. His grandfather Imdad Khan (1848-1920) and father Enayet Khan (1894-1938) were celebrated sitarists revered much by musicians and listeners alike.

Yet, unfortunately for Vilayat Khan, his father died while he was in his teens, depriving him of the gharanedar talim that was his due. But his father's legacy had been preserved by his disciples, and it was one such modest and self-effacing disciple, D.T. Joshi, who taught young Vilayat the basic ropes of his gharana. Joshi was himself influenced by the Agra maestro Faiyaz Khan and this certainly rubbed off on young Vilayat too. He also learnt music from his maternal grandfather Bande Hasan Khan and his son Zinda Hasan who were court musicians in the hill principality of Nahan. His elder sister married vocalist Amir Khan (1912-1974), whose influence on Vilayat Khan was profound.

In an interview that he gave Gyan Seth on Doordarshan a few years ago, Vilayat Khan placed Amir Khan alone on one side of a divide, placing all other contemporary vocalists on the other. It is through Amir Khan that many critics traced the influence of Kirana gharana in Vilayat Khan's music. What Vilayat Khan lacked in traditional learning, he made up by his own industry, perseverance and active listening. People who remember Vilayat Khan's early baithaks in the 1950s and 60s in Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) testify to his phenomenal memory of traditional vocal bandishes. But what made his style distinctive and transcendent can only be attributed to his genius.

Vilayat Khan made much of his own style, which he borrowed from vocalism and called the gayaki ang. This attribute, often misunderstood, has taken a mystical life all of its own. There is for instance no instrumentalist who would deny playing gayaki today. The fountainhead of classical Hindustani tradition is vocal music and to that extent all instrumentalists are only expected to elaborate the superior vocal tradition. But what Vilayat Khan did was indeed distinctive. He reproduced on the sitar the vocalisms, that is, the flourishes associated with the newer khyal tradition like meends, gamaks and so on, even borrowing some stylistic idioms from thumri. It was the incorporation of the latter that made his renditions of ragas like Bhairavi and Desh so delightful.

This point becomes clear when one compares inevitably his style with that of his great contemporary Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar's development of a raga is based on hallowed dhrupad whose structured note-by-note elaboration leading to a climax is carefully woven through an innate sense of composition. By contrast, Vilayat Khan drew more on the madhyalaya and drut compositions from the khyal repertoire, embellishing these with his superb and unmatched technique. He removed the string for the lower octave in the sitar since these notes were not used much by vocalists, and used instead other stylistic innovations such as rhythmic passages on the additional sympathetic strings with brilliant effect. He can rightly and controversially be credited with developing the freedom of the khyal to its zenith. Perhaps that is why critics often described his long meandering alaaps as lacking in raagdaari (correct raga grammar). India's finest music critic Chetan Karnani has perceptively described Vilayat Khan's style as "waywardly romantic". It is important to place this in the correct historical perspective. Contemporary instrumentalists in Kolkata, notably the sitarist Mushtaq Ali Khan (1911-1989) and the sarodist Radhika Mohan Moitra (1917-1981), also made the move to enrich the rather staccato instrumental styles by drawing on the richer vocal repertoires. But although they were great musicians none of them had the flamboyance Vilayat Khan exuded.

Vilayat Khan's public career was contentious and controversial. His competition with his slightly older contemporary Ravi Shankar is legendary. It is to the credit of the latter that he has suffered Vilayat Khan's barbs and innuendoes with dignified and sometimes good-humoured silence. Music critics and music historians were wary of Vilayat Khan's public tantrums, and most of them dismissed these histrionics indulgently as idiosyncratic misbehaviour. What they have failed to discern is Vilayat Khan's life-long tussle with the Indian establishment. In post-Independence India the public sphere increasingly came to be dominated by smug Brahminical nationalists. Vilayat Khan felt his exclusion keenly and it is for this reason that he always rejected official honours. I have heard well-meaning Bengalis complain that Vilayat Khan only spoke pidgin Bengali despite having spent a good part of his life in Kolkata. He probably did this on purpose, to keep a distance from the all-knowing and stifling patronage circles of Bengali babus.

Despite this Vilayat Khan became a much-sought-after star and the high fee he commanded in the festival circuit was often discussed with awe and amazement. The index to his popularity can be gauged from the fact that HMV, at one time India's premier recording company, brought out more than a dozen LPs of the maestro, a number rivalled only by Ravi Shankar and Bhimsen Joshi. Some of his greatest renderings can be found in these old discs (now also available as cassettes/CDs). Perhaps the most accomplished of his recordings is Gara (with Zakir Hussain on the tabla). This was a testimony to the enduring influence that Agra had on Vilayat Khan's musical personality. He was also well known for his recording of Jaijaiwanti, another raga made popular by the Agra maestro Faiyaz Khan. He recorded this raga twice, once in 1969 on LP and again in 1991 for the American aficionado Lyle Wachovsky on CD for the Indian Archive Music label. His other celebrated recordings include Darbari (particularly the alaap), Saazgiri (especially the gat) and a long recording of Yaman. His own composition, the raga Saanjh Saravali, was appreciated much; later in his life he invented another raga, which he indulgently named Vilayat Khan Kanada (recordings of both these are available on the HMV label). His duets with shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan were very popular. He will also be remembered for his superb score for Satyajit Ray's Jalshaghar (The Music Room). A little more than a year ago he published a book of memoirs in Bengali, Komal Gandhar, a series of informal conversations with journalist Shankarlal Bhattacharya.

Vilayat Khan's principle disciples include his brother Imrat Khan and son Shujaat Khan, Kashinath Mukherjee (he is the late film-maker Hrishikesh Mukherjee's brother), Kalyani Roy from Kolkata, and Arvind Parekh from Mumbai. But the liquid grace and beauty of his style is best represented today by Shahid Parvez, not a direct disciple but from the same lineage of musicians.

Vilayat Khan, born in 1924 in Gouripur (now in Bangladesh), died in Mumbai on March 13, 2004.

The death of Ustad Vilayat Khan saheb is a personal loss; our families have known each other for over two generations. His father Ustad Inayat Khan saheb and my father Ustad Hafeez Ali Khan saheb and Ustad Fayaz Khan saheb, a great singer of his time, used to perform together. There was hardly any function where they were not seen together.

The relationship between our families continued with Ustad Vilayat Khan saheb. Khan saheb was a legendary sitar player. For us music lovers, he was a Bharat Ratna because of his immense contribution to the world of Indian classical music (Ustad Vilayat Khan turned down national awards in 1964 and 1968, saying that members of the award committees were not competent to judge his music). He was an icon as far as Indian classical music was concerned and became a gharana in himself. Yet, out of sheer modesty, he used to call himself a disciple of the Imdaad gharana.

The sitar and Vilayat Khan had become synonymous. He was a musician by birth because he was born in a family that had worshipped Indian classical music for seven generations. His only rival was Pandit Ravi Shankar. Contemporary students of the sitar either belong to the Ravi Shankar or the Vilayat Khan school.

Panditji became a worldwide figure because he practised his music in the West. As a result of his association with the Beatles at one stage, he became a household name in Europe and America.

Khan saheb had two wives. Shujaat, his son though his first wife, Monisha, is a wonderful exponent of the sitar. Khan saheb also had two daughters with Monisha. Yaman is married into a royal family and Zila is a classical singer in her own right.

He spent the last four decades of his life with his second wife, Zubeda. They have a son, Hidayat, who also plays the sitar.

Vilayat Khan saheb was a vibrant person with a great sense of humour. I recall the moments when he would visit my house in Delhi and we would sit together for hours discussing music and other things. He was like my elder brother. In his death, I have incurred a great personal loss; I have lost a brother and a friend. His achievements will continue to inspire people like me.

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan spoke to Onkar Singh

Image: Lynette Menezes

Ustad Vilayat Khan weaves magic
Tribune Reporters

Patiala,

February 18

Classical music emerged at its very zenith when sitar maestro, Ustad Vilayat Khan, who has been instrumental in bringing about a revolution in the music scenario through his introduction of “gayaki ang” in sitar, performed on the fourth evening of the Patiala Heritage Festival yesterday.

Ustad Vilayat Khan (centre) gave a spellbinding performance on the fourth evening of the Patiala Heritage Festival. — Photo Subash Patialvi

Mesmerising the audience with his intense and soul-rendering music, the sitar virtuoso performed within the classical Hindustani tradition with a single accompanist tabla and brought forth an unparallel distinctive vocal approach in playing his instrument. Introducing the audience to the intense playing of “dhrupad”, “khhayal, thumri” and “bharvi” on the persistent request of the audience, he filled the evening with his magic touch.

 

Singing several compositions by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ajoy Chakravarty of Patiala gharana, left a deep impact on the audience as he performed in Patiala after 14 years. Initiating his two-hour performance with raag Bopali, Ajoy, who is also a research scholar on Patiala gharana introduced the audience to Khayyam, bhakti sangeet, dadra and ornamented form of thumri composed by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan.

 

Meanwhile, eminent art historian Dr B.N. Goswami while delivering the keynote address at a seminar on Patiala’s heritage at Punjabi University here today said Patiala should be developed as an idea of a successful and open-minded culture.

 

He said the erstwhile rulers of Patiala worked for the welfare of all sections of society. He said the “jyot” and idol of Goddess Kali was brought from Kolkata as were teachers of Mohindra College established by Maharaja Mohinder Singh. Similarly, a study of sketches and paintings of the period revealed that the royalty gave freedom to artists.

 

Ms Anita Singh read out a paper on music. She highlighted how the Patiala Gharana came into being, saying that eminent musicians of Patiala were earlier “sarangi” players. This was essential because of the “tawaif” culture, she said.

 

Dr Param Bakshish Singh from the Punjab Historical Studies Department disclosed how the founder of Patiala, Baba Ala, had managed to get himself recognised as a Raja by the Durranis whom he had plundered.

 

The continued journey

C.S. SARVAMANGALA

Sitarist Arvind Parikh's short film on his guru, the unparalleled sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan, is a fitting tribute

 

It was simple and graceful: the visual of an elderly artist on stage, with his visage partially lit up by the reading light. It put us through a musical journey into an enigma called Ustad Vilayat Khan. Arvind Parikh, a leading disciple of the sitar maestro Vilayat Khan has closely witnessed the music and inner life of his guru, in all its rich detail for nearly six decades.

Gurudakshina, the audio-visual presentation, is a highly sophisticated endeavour by a real connoisseur bestowed with the interiority of an insider as an ardent shishya of the Imdadkhani gharana. It is equally marked by the objective perception of an outsider who traces the musical lineage as a journey of continuity within the framework of a tradition. Add to this his experience as a committed teacher, his achievements as a musicologist, mature performing artist and effective cultural organiser of Music Forum fame.

Theirs is a rare guru-shishya relationship, full of love and admiration; a long saga unfolding in a mutual exploration of musical experience. This intimate association, backed by a sharp perceptive mind and necessary imagination to understand music in its socio-economic and spiritual dimensions, along with an organised approach, has enabled Arvindji to document the features and nuances of the Imdadkhan/Etawah Gharana of sitar/surbahar music.

What Arvindji does in Gurudakshina is to make us see what constitutes the fabric of his Guru's music lineage thereby making possible a darshana of the Imdadkhani gharana. The audio-visual addresses several common perceptions and labels about Vilayat's sitar-playing and attempts to position them in the right perspective even while elaborating on what constitutes his revolutionary style.

Legendary musician

Vilayat Khan is generally perceived as an elitist performer, but Arvindji clarifies that, "Khansaab's elitism challenged his audiences by the elaborate architecture of his music, richness of musical content and sophisticated presentation." His music was ever accessible to the majority, but never populist. He held his art very sacred and considered himself an orthodox musician, but was generally considered a revolutionary. This can be understood in the context of Vilayat's vocalist tradition and his genius, which evolved the sitar from its simpler originals to sophisticated dimensions.

The sitar, which in his father's time had continued in the tradition of the Rudraveena was now set for a paradigm shift. On account of the growing dominance of the khayal, changes in acoustic environment and several other factors, Vilayat launched his search for a new idiom, which was "a sophisticated blend of vocalised and instrumental expressions."

The embellishments and craftwork and the emotional feelings often associated with vocal music, the tanpura effect - all these define the Vilayatkhani alaap, an experience which narrows down the gap between instrument and vocal music.

A piece in Raag Darbari brought out the nuances of the Vilayatkhani jod. Sitar has followed the dhrupad tradition as far as the structure is concerned.

The stroke pattern of the rudraveena, once believed to be an accompaniment to vocal music achieved a high degree of continuity of the oral experience and the technique adopted here ensures a similar continuity. In order to suit his vocalised style, Vilayat introduced far-reaching changes in the shape, size and construction of the sitar. This change altered the tonal effect dramatically, making Vilayat the pioneer who revolutionalised the sitar.

Multifaceted shishya

After the audio-visual screening Arvindji rendered a soulful alap, jod, vilambit and drut gats in Jog and Zila. He was accompanied on the tabla by Anutosh Degharia, a disciple of Ustad Sabir Khan, the acclaimed tabla maestro.

I was curious to know how Arvindji manages his music world with that of his business as the head of a major international freight forwarding company. His reply was simple and direct: it was a question of priority and time management. The value addition to this statement comes when one realises that his organising and managerial acumen have found their way into his music world as a part of his character. Resonance UNESCO Music Council's magazine carried this unique success story of the Music Forum wondering, "Could Bombay teach London or Berlin a thing or two?"

The very idea of the Bombay Music Forum speaks of an organised effort at understanding music performance in a holistic perspective. Arvindji narrated how it has brought to a common platform performing artists, music critics, connoisseurs, recording companies, teaching universities, music organisers, media administrators and all those connected with music in a meaningful way, enabling them to share their considered opinions.

Arvindji's other illustrious assignments include Vice-president, International Music Council, UNESCO (1994-97), and presently co-ordinator for the Indian subcontinent. Recipient of the Gaurav Puraskar by the Gujarat State Sangeet Natak Akademi and the National Award for instrumental music in 2003, his contribution in bringing about a serious change in the language and method of music criticism should alone put Arvindji a cut above other musicians.

The show came alive with memorable moment and powerful images — Vilayatji's Bilaskhani Todi on his grandfather Imdad Khan's surbahar, a 102-year-old recording of Imdad Khan's Jaunpuri, Khan saab's singing with the sitar at a public concert, the soft resolution of the black-and-white photograph showing the deflected string of the sitar in suspended animation — a rich tale of the sitar indeed.

My association with Ustad Vilayat Khan saheb is 60 years old. I first met him in 1943 and he was kind enough to accept me as his student.

I had actually come to Bombay from Ahmedabad to audition for All India Radio since I had learnt the sitar for a couple of years. It was sheer chance that, as I got off the train, I bumped into a friend who told me Ustad Vilayat Khan was coming to his house. I was a great admirer of Khan saheb and told my friend I would love to meet him.

When Khan saheb heard I was going to audition for the radio in a few hours, he asked me to play for him. He knew I was going to fail because I was just no good. But he still taught me a few compositions. He even phoned the radio station and told them, 'I am sending one of my students. Look after him.'

If I had any kind of merit, I should have passed. But I had absolutely no merit whatsoever.

Yet, as far as I was concerned, the trip to Bombay was fruitful. Khan saheb had accepted me as his student. He said, 'Ab hamare college mein admission mil gaya hai, tum yahan aao [You've been admitted to my college, so shift your education to Bombay].' I was studying in Ahmedabad then and I moved to Bombay's Elphinstone College.

Since we were both fairly young then -- around 17 or 18 years old -- our relationship had several dimensions. There was the guru-shishya relationship; he was my teacher and I was his student. We were also friends; we enjoyed going out together. I also acted as his secretary -- I organised his concerts, helped him take care of his finances…

Though he was facing a lot of financial difficulty, he was very innocent when it came to money matters. Khan saheb was just 10 or 11 years old when his father passed away in 1938. The responsibility of his family -- his mother and his younger brother, Imrat Khan, was on him; his three sisters were already married -- when he came to Bombay in 1943.

He was struggling to make it as a musician. Life was not easy for him. But he was ambitious and had unbelievable determination. He would never compromise. His determination was the key to his success.

He was not a public relations man, so I took on the task of cultivating concert organisers and getting him programmes. I would fix a concert for Rs 500 and lie to him saying he was to be paid only Rs 350. I would save the rest of the money for him. What I did not realise then was that he knew I was doing this.

One day, he asked me, 'Arvindbhai, kitna paisa jamaya hai tumne [How much money have you collected]?' I was surprised and asked him, 'Aapko kaise pata [How do you know]?' He just laughed. I had collected Rs 5,000 by then. He said he wanted the money. The wife of a Hindu musician, a harmonium player, was about to deliver a baby and if she was not hospitalised and looked after properly, there were chances both she and the baby would die. 'He needs the money more than I do,' Khan saheb told me and gave him that Rs 5,000.

You don't forget something like that. It was these qualities of Khan saheb that made me a better human being.

But he worried about money. He used to always tell me, 'Dekho, Arvind, main tumhe music sikhata hoon, tum mujhe business sikhao [Look, Arvind, I'll teach you music; you teach me business].'

By this time, we shared a good relationship and would spend three to four days in a week together. We used to go out to films; we would go out on drives. We'd do all kinds of things as long as it suited my conservative nature.

Let me give you an example. Sitara Devi, the famous dancer, had arranged Khan saheb's programme at her house. It was only after we went there that we realised some of her guests were from the film industry. He knew I was not a big fan of the film industry. After a while he said, 'Arvindbhai, this atmosphere is not right for you. Wear your chappals and go.' 'Khan saheb, the programme…?' I asked. 'Forget about the programme,' he said. 'I am a professional and I have to earn money so I am going to play. I don't want you to get involved in all this. Go.'

He, on the other hand, loved the glamour of the film world. He enjoyed meeting actors and actresses. Many great actors were fans of his music. He used to attend many film world parties. Motilal was a great friend of his. Dilip Kumar knew him well. Nargis was his student for many years.

Khan saheb loved socialising. He enjoyed going to clubs. He enjoyed drinking. He was fond of cars, good clothes and perfumes. He was a very fine ballroom dancer. He was a fine billiards player. He was very good at snooker. He loved horse riding. Whatever he did, he did it well. He would go deeper and deeper into any subject he was interested in. He was a very meticulous and thorough man. He never compromised and never did anything haphazardly.

He was always a leader. Even at social gatherings and meetings, he would talk and everyone would listen. He was a great showman. He was very witty and enjoyed playing jokes on people. But the jokes were never harmful. He never liked to hurt people.

He never forgot those who helped him either. He would always talk about one Mushtaqbhai in Delhi, whom he had met when he was around 14 years old. 'Arvindbhai,' he would say with tears in his eyes, 'that man taught me how to behave in society. That man taught me how to wear good clothes.' Once, he even showed me the barracks where they lived.

I don't think he was disappointed in his students. He had many talented students and their devotion and respect made him happy. He was very happy that both his sons were doing well and had made a good name for themselves.

He was aware of his weaknesses. One day, I remember asking him if it was necessary to smoke. That was when told me how he began smoking. His teacher Kalu Mian would promise him one bidi if he practised for one hour. 'Us bidi ki laalach mein main riyaaz karta tha [I used to practise so I get my hands on that bidi].' So I asked him, 'Khan saheb, is it necessary to smoke to practise?' 'Khabardaar [I'm warning you],' he said, 'cigarette ko haath lagaya tho… [if you touch cigarettes…]. It's a very bad habit. I know, I have been smoking from childhood. If you ever smoke a cigarette, I shall be very annoyed with you.'

At the same time, he was a man of strong opinions. It was not easy to change his mind. I think that was because he was very intelligent. He did not read a lot, but he knew exactly what was going on.

His level of expectation from the world at large was very high. He always felt he was not given his due recognition; he would say, 'Is desh mein meri koi kadar nahi ho rahi [this country does not value me]. Kya ho raha hai mere liye yahan [What is being done for me here]?'

He was not media savvy, so there was very little publicity about him in the newspapers. He did not go out of his way to cultivate the market place. But he did feel very strongly that he was not given his due. I believe the more intellectual a person is, the higher is his level of expectation. It starts with disappointment and then becomes frustration and then ultimately it becomes…I would not say bitterness. He was bitter around 10 years ago. In the last few years, he had mellowed down but the level of frustration was there.

There were influential people in America who were great followers and devotees of Khan saheb. They offered his entire family a green card. All kinds of facilities were given to him. He got good concerts there. His style of living was good. He would stay there for six months and come to India for six months.

Just three months ago he told me, 'Arvindbhai, I have a great social life there (in America). I have a lot of friends. People come and go all the time. But, musically, I am feeling lonely. I am coming back.' He wanted to return to the world he belonged to, where music and discussions about music are a way of life. This was going to be his last year in America. He would have come back here.

Arvind Parikh, businessman and musician, spoke to Savera R Someshwar

Image: Uttam Ghosh