Jun

21

Ali Akbar Khan, sarod pioneer (1922-2009)

June 21, 2009 posted by indiatime |

“….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….”
Ali Akbar Khan (Sarod maestro)

Ali Akbar Khan’s death last Thursday, is like an end to an institution that had carried the flag of Indian classical music in the west for over a half century. Ali Akbar Khan and brother-in-law Ravi Shankar were the face and the fingers of Indian music in the west, propelling its ancient system of swars, ragas and talas into the world conscience, and making way for future generations of Indian classical musicians to be all that they could be.

In his book ‘The Dawn of Indian Music in the West’, Peter Lavezzoli writes about the first time the Indian classical music played on American television:

Ali Akbar Khan, Chatur Lal (Tabla virtuoso) and Shanta Rao ( Bharat Natyam dancer) became the first Indian classical artists to appear on television in the United States, when they appeared on Omnibus, a cultural program supported by Ford Foundation that was instrumental in sponsoring Ali AKbar Khan’s visit to the United States. So on the Sunday afternoon of April 10, 1955, Yehudi Menuhin introduced the Indian trio to the American audiences. For the next few minutes, Ali Akbar Khan and Chatur Lal managed to give a very short demo and then Shanta Rao performed the Bharat Natyam for about 5 minutes. The overall Indian demo, titled ‘Dances of India’, lasted barely 10 minutes.

Later that month, Khan and Chatur Lal played in New York, getting these reviews:

“…Clearly this music is meant to be relished both for its patterns and its performance…repeatedly enchanted by rhythms, colors, sonorities and melodic bits…especially impressed by the power of this modest ensemble speaking an exotic tongue to reach out and say something to another world….”

“…have never before encountered quite the degree of virtuosity in this idiom….found their music endlessly fascinating from a technical point of view and curiously hypnotic in its emotional effect….”

Over a period of decades, Khan won 5 grammy nominations, more than 5 honorary doctorate degrees from prestigious universities, trained more than 10,000 American students in Sarod. Here’s a short clip about Ali Akbar, whom Yehudi Menuhin once called the greatest musician in the world.


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3 Comments so far

  1. A.S.Mukesh on July 3, 2009 11:50 am

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