Ali Akbar Khan was born in Shibpur, a small hamlet in present-day Bangladesh, on April 14, 1922 to Acharya Baba Allauddin Khan and Madina Begum.
While he was still a small boy, the family moved to Maihar (in Madhya Pradesh) where his father was employed as a court musician. A renowned taskmaster, Ustad Allauddin Khan initiated his son into ta’lim at the young age of three, starting with vocal music before sending young Ali Akbar to study with his brother Fakir Aftabuddin Khan who taught percussion and flute to the young boy.
Once Ali Akbar came back to Maihar, his father took over his studies and trained him on various instruments before deciding upon the Sarod as the instrument that he would concentrate on and play for the rest of his life. As Khansahib recalled much later in life, “Baba taught me for 20 years after my return from Bengal. I would have to study up to 18 hours a day. In fact, practically all my waking hours would be filled with music.”
In 1936, at the age of 13, Khansahib gave his first public performance at a music conference in Allahabad. Although his ta’lim would continue intensely for many years after that momentous occasion, his entry on the performance stage would change his relationship with music. Two years after that first performance, Khansahib gave his first recital on All India Radio (AIR) where he was accompanied on Tabla by the great Ustad Alla Rakha. His relationship with AIR would take a leap forward in 1944 when he went on to become its youngest music director at the Lucknow station.
In his early 20s, Khansahib made his first recording in Lucknow for the HMV label. Soon after, on his father’s recommendation, he was appointed as court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur. It was at the palace that he was bestowed with his first title, that of ‘Ustad’. He told the Maharaja that he could not accept it without his father’s permission, as his father was his guru and had the last word about his development as a musician. The king sent a telegram, and his father approved the title; however, Baba would often tease Khansahib about it, and in turn Khansahib found it to be too embarrassing to use.
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After Jodhpur, Khansahib moved to Bombay, where he earned acclaim as a composer of several film soundtracks. He composed quite extensively, beginning with Chetan Anand’s Aandhiyan (1952), followed by Satyajit Ray’s Devi (1960), Merchant-Ivory’s The Householder (1963), and Tapan Sinha’s Khudito Pashan (1960), for which he won the “Best Musician of the Year” award.
In 1945, Khansahib recorded a raga he had newly created for which he would become widely popular and would be remembered eternally. This was the charming Raga Chandranandan, a beautiful amalgam of four evening ragas: Malkauns, Chandrakauns, Nandkauns, and Kaushi Kanhra.
The second part of Khansahib’s life – his life away from India – commenced after a meeting with the Violin virtuoso Lord Yehudi Menuhin upon whose request Khansahib visited both Europe and the United States in the mid-1950s. Menuhin went on to call Khansahib, “an absolute genius… the greatest musician in the world.” During his first trip, Khansahib recorded “Music of India; Morning & Evening Ragas.” Khansahib returned to India with a conviction that the way forward for him would be to lay the foundation for an educational institution. Since then, he would continue performing and composing, but teaching would become his mainstay and his life would be dedicated to passing on the tradition of Indian classical music.
Filled with a missionary zeal while choosing to open the Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) in California in 1967, Khansahib said that “there remains every possibility of Hindustani music taking roots in the West in the near future.”
For his tremendous contribution to music, Khansahib was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1967, and the Padma Vibhushan in 1989 by the Government of India. He received the MacArthur Fellowship in 1991, the first Indian musician to receive the “genius grant.” In 1997, Khansahib received the National Endowment for the Arts’ prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, widely considered to be the highest honour for the traditional arts in United States. However, despite his many accolades, the only title that Khansahib truly treasured was the one given to him by his father – Swara Samrat.
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Awards and honours sat lightly on Khansahib’s shoulders. On his lifelong relationship with the Sarod, he said, “If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself; after 20 years, you may become a performer, then 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.”
A man of few words, Khansahib was a known introvert who never gave in to flashy moments on stage and was always completely absorbed in the music. He would put down his head, shut his eyes and focus on the Sarod, producing a kind of music that remains unparalleled.
Khansahib had an enviable repertoire of over a 100 ragas and a discography that is continuing to evolve, thanks to the archival recordings held with the Ali Akbar Khan Library. Among his numerous peerless renditions, it is a difficult task to select a few. Nonetheless, among my favourites are iconic recordings of ragas Bilaskhani Todi, Shree, Hem Bihag, Darbari Kanhra and Sindhu Bhairavi.
Khansahib passed away at his home in San Anselmo, California on June 18, 2009, at the age of 87. True to his indomitable spirit, filled with perseverance, hard work and devotion, he taught music to his students until the last night of his life. His teaching opened the doors for many to revel in the tradition of Indian classical music and one hopes that his centenary celebrations will provide an opportunity to further explore Khansahib’s limitless genius.
Irfan Zuberi is a student of Hindustani music and an audiovisual archivist.