Ali Akbar Khan

Ali Akbar Khan was born in the village of Shibpur, Comilla, in present-day Bangladesh (then East Bengal), to revered musician and teacher, Allauddin Khan and Madina Begum. Soon after his birth, khan's family returned to Maihar (in present day Madhya Pradesh, India) where his father was the primary court musician for the Maharaja of the princely state.

From an early age Khan received training from his father in various instruments as well as vocal composition, but finally gravitated towards the sarod. Allauddin was a perfectionist and a strict taskmaster, and Khan's lessons started before dawn and often lasted 18 hours a day.Khan also learned to play the tabla and the pakhavaj from his uncle, Aftabuddin Khan, who he visited at Shibpur.During this period he met several prominent musicians, such as the sarodist Timir Baran and flutist Pannalal Ghosh, who came to study with his father; in later years he was joined in his lessons by his sister Annapurna Devi, who became an accomplished player of the surbahar, and fellow student Ravi Shankar. Shankar and Annapurna Devi were married in 1941.

Of his training on the sarod, he wrote:
"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, after years of rigorous training gave his debut performance at a music conference in Allahabad in 1936, at the age of 13. Three years later, in December 1939, he accompanied Ravi Shankar on the sarod during the latter's debut performance at the same conference; this was the first of many jugalbandis (duets) between the two musicians. In 1938 Khan gave his first recital on All India Radio (AIR), Bombay (accompanied on the tabla by Alla Rakha), and starting in January 1940, he gave monthly performances on AIR, Lucknow. Finally in 1944, both Shankar and Khan left Maihar to start their professional careers as musicians; Shankar went to Bombay, while Khan became the youngest Music Director for AIR, Lucknow and was responsible for solo performances and composing for the radio orchestra

In 1943, on his father's recommendation, Khan was appointed a court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanumant Singh. There, he taught and composed music besides giving recitals and was accorded the title of Ustad by the Maharaja. When the pricely states were wound down with India's independence in 1947 and Hanumant Singh died in a plane crash in 1948, Khan moved to Bombay.

In Bombay, he won acclaim as a composer of several film scores, including Chetan Anand's Aandhiyan, Satyajit Ray's Devi, Merchant-Ivory's The Householder, and Tapan Sinha's Kshudista Pashan ("Hungry stones"), for which he won the "Best Musician of the Year" award. Later in 1993, he would score some of the music for Bernardo Bertolucci Little Buddha.

Beginning in 1945, Khan also started recording a series of 78 rpm disks (which could record about 3 minutes of music) at the HMV Studios in Bombay. For one such record he conceived a new composition Raga Chandranandan ("moonstruck"), based on four evening ragas, Malkauns, Chandrakauns, Nandakauns and Kaushi Kanra. This record was a huge success in India and the raga found a worldwide audience when a 22 minute rendition was re-recorded for the Master musician of India LP in 1965 - one of Khan's seminal recordings.

He performed in India and traveled extensively in the West. In 1956, Khan founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta, with the mission to teach and spread Indian classical music. He founded another school of the same name in Berkeley, California in 1967 and later moved it to San Rafael, California.[9] In 1985 he founded another branch of the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel, Switzerland. Khan was the first Indian musician to record an LP album of Indian classical music in the United States and to play sarod on American television.

Khan has participated in a number of classic jugalbandi pairings, most notably with Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee and violinist L. Subramaniam. A few recordings of duets with Vilayat Khan also exist. He also collaborated with Western musicians. In 1971 Khan performed at the Madison Square Garden for the Concert for Bangladesh along with Ravi Shankar, Alla Rakha and Kamala Chakravarty; other musicians at the concert included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. An album and a movie of the concert were later released.

Khan was based in the United States for the last four decades of his life. He toured extensively until he was prevented from doing so by ill-health in the period prior to his death from renal failure.

Before starting his concert on 19 June 2009 in the Barbican Centre, Zakir Hussain dedicated that night's performance to this great musician who had died the day before. The audience also paid their respects with a minute's silence.

Khan was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1989,[13] among other awards. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991. In 1997, Khan received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honour in the traditional arts. Khan has received two Grammy nominations.

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Ustad Vilayat Khan

Vilayat Khan was born in Gauripur, British India to Enayat Khan, a sitar maestro. His family of musicians trace their pedigree back to the court musicians of the Mughals. His father, recognised as a leading sitar and surbahar (bass sitar) player of his time, as had been the grandfather, Imdad Khan, before him. He was taught in the family style, known as the Imdadkhani Gharana or Etawah Gharana, after a village outside Agra where Imdad lived.

However, Enayat Khan died when Vilayat was only nine, so much of his education came from the rest of his family: his uncle, sitar and surbahar maestro Wahid Khan, his maternal grandfather, singer Bande Hassan Khan, and his mother, Bashiran Begum, who had studied the practice procedure of Imdad, Enayat and Wahid. Vilayat's uncle Zinde Hassan looked after his riyaz (practice). As a boy, Vilayat wanted to be a singer; but his mother, herself from a family of vocalists, felt he had a strong responsibility to bear the family torch as a sitar maestro.

Vilayat Khan omitted one of the two thick bronze alloy bass strings from the sitar. The Etawah gharana sitar is designed for long sustaining of meend (pulling the string along curved frets) and produces a clearer, more resonant tone with less buzz than the traditional sitars. In the 1950s, Vilayat Khan worked closely with instrument makers, especially the famous sitar-makers Kanailal & Hiren Roy, to further develop the instrument. Also, he liked to perform without a tanpura drone, filling out the silence with strokes to his chikari strings.

Some ragas he would somewhat re-interpret (Bhankar, Jaijaivanti), others he invented himself (Enayatkhani Kanada, Sanjh Saravali), but he was first and foremost a traditional interpreter of grand, basic ragas such as Yaman, Shree, Todi and Bhairavi.

When he died from lung cancer in 2004, Vilayat Khan had been recording for over 65 years, broadcasting on All-India Radio since almost as far back and been seen as a master (ustad) for 60. He had been touring outside India off and on for more than 50 years, and was probably the first Indian musician to play in England after independence (1951). In the 1990s, his recording career reached a climax of sorts with a series of ambitious CDs for India Archive Music in New York, some traditional, some controversial, some eccentric. Towards the end of his life, he also performed and recorded sporadically on the surbahar.
[edit] Personal life

Vilayat Khan spent much of his life living in Calcutta. He was married twice, his first marriage ending in divorce; he had two daughters, Sufi singer Zila Khan (http://www.zilakhan.in ) and Yaman (named after ragas), and two sons, Shujaat (b. 1960) and Hidayat (b. 1975), both sitarists. He was survived also by his younger brother, Imrat Khan, the post-war star of the surbahar field. The brothers played celebrated duets in their youth, but had a severe falling-out and for years were not on speaking terms. His nephew Rais Khan is also a star sitar-player. Vilayat took few disciples other than his sons; among the best-known are Kashinath Mukherjee, Arvind Parikh, Kalyani Roy, Debashis Datta.

He enjoyed horse-riding, pool playing, swimming and ballroom dancing. His successes made him rich, and though he grew more pious late in life, he used to drive sports cars and dress in haute couture, and also collected such various items as firearms, smoking pipes, antique European crockery, cut glass and chandeliers. Vilayat Khan also gave sitar lessons to Big Jim Sullivan, the famous English session musician.

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Hariprasad Chaurasia

Hariprasad Chaurasia was born in Allahabad in a non musical family. His father was a wrestler. His mother died when he was four. Hariprasad had to learn music almost in secret, scared of the father who wanted him to become a wrestler. He did go to the Akhada and train with his father for some time, although he also started learning music in secret, and practicing in his friend's house. He has credited this wrestling training for giving him the immense stamina and lung power that are the hallmarks of his flute playing, stating that,
“ I was not any good at wrestling. I went there only to please my father. But maybe because of the strength and stamina I built up then, I'm able to play the bansuri even to this day. ”
Hariprasad Chaurasia started learning vocal music from his neighbour, Pandit Rajaram at the age of 15. Later, he switched to playing the flute under the tutelage of Pandit Bholanath Prasanna of Varanasi. Much later, while working for All India Radio, he received guidance from the reclusive Annapurna Devi, (daughter of Baba Allaudin Khan).

He is considered a rare combination of innovator and traditionalist. He has expanded the expressive possibilities of the bansuri through his masterful blowing technique.

Apart from classical music, he has made a mark as a Hindi language film music director along with Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, forming a group called Shiv-Hari. He has also collaborated with various world musicians in experimental cross-cultural performances, including the fusion group Shakti.

He serves as the Artistic Director of the World Music Department at the Rotterdam Music Conservatory in the Netherlands.

He has collaborated with several western musicians, including John McLaughlin and Jan Garbarek, and has also composed music for a number of Indian films. He has performed throughout the world winning acclaim from varied audiences and fellow musicians including Yehudi Menuhin and Jean-Pierre Rampal.

Chaurasia is married to Anuradha, a classical vocalist.

He has won a number of awards including the Sangeet Natak Academy (1984),Konark Samman (1992), Padma Bhushan (1992),Yash Bharati Sanman (1994) and Padma Vibhushan (2000).

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Mallikarjun Mansoor

Pt. Mallikarjun Mansoor was lucky to have been born into a family of performing arts and musicians. Hence, from childhood he was hooked to theatrical recitals and even sang for the actors. He was avidly attracted to this artistic genre, and even had dropped out of school. But, fate had other plans in store for him. During one such performance, he was noticed by none other than the illustrious Nilakanthbua Alurmath, who advised his brother to train him in music and sensing, and not acting. Mallikarjun was overjoyed by this proposal, and gladly followed him to Maihar, where the next few years were his most phenomenal stage in life, and he was transformed into an erudite singer. The upcoming years saw his rise and more rises in the success ladder, through his excellent performances in various musical styles and fashions. Despite all such kudos and his innate genius in renditions, he always maintained a humble and modest attitude to living, never yearning for stardom or flashy self-promotions. He ever remained a man of the village and dressed in a similar lamer, never hankering for city life and money. His years with his celestial guru, Manji Khan, son of Ustad Allauddin Khan were somewhat responsible for his code of conduct. When on stage, he would be completely engrossed in his rhythm and melodic combination and perform a song with such perfect ease and depth, that he could almost be named a perfectionist classical singer.

The Hubli-Dharwad belt is sacred to most musicians and music lovers. For it is this prolific area that has given the country some of the finest Hindustani singers, both male and female, in the 20th century. The names are big, and the numbers many. Yet the one name that has become synonymous with the place is Mansoor`s. Mallikarjun was born in the village of Mansoor in 1910 into a family with musical and artistic interests. Encouraged by his brother, himself a talented actor, Mallikarjun was drawn to theatre during his boyhood so much so that he dropped out of school. He could also sing and play the harmonium quite well. A Carnatic singer and violinist, Apayya Swami, who lived in the Dharwad area, initiated Mallikarjun into Carnatic music during his boyhood. Once during a theatrical performance, the well-known Nilakanthbua Alurmath, a direct student of Pt. Balakrishnabua Icchalkaranjikar, was impressed with Mallikarjun`s singing and asked him to come along to train in the Hindustani system. Nilakanthbua told Mallikarjun`s older brother that Mallikarjun`s talents were being wasted in the drama troupe and that they ought to be channelised to classical music. After receiving permission from his family, Mallikarjun gladly followed him to Miraj where he trained under the Gwalior maestro for six years imbibing all the fundamental aspects of music from this fine teacher. Though he moved on, Mallikarjun always said that Gwalior provided the base of his gayaki and was never one to belittle its impact on his early career. He moved to Bombay and started giving concerts. He also cut a few records during the very early 1930s, which created quite an impact.

But his quenchless thirst for music, fortunately enough, drew him to one of the concerts of Manji Khan, the gifted son of Ustad Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana. He beseeched Manji Khan to accept him as his disciple, Manji Khan, after listening to some of his fine recordings, readily took him under his wings, impressed as he was by the young man`s sincerity and gifts. The two and a half years of training that followed were intense, in that it was during the period that Mallikarjun was introduced to the subtle beauties of the mode of raaga development followed by the Jaipur gayaki. Manji Khan, in his teaching sessions, interspersed practice with theory. From this ebullient guru Mallikarjun learnt the Jaipur gharana`s rhythm-melody combinations, especially the attractive manner in which the raaga is patterned within the framework of tala. Importantly, it was Manji Khan who initiated Mansoor to the importance of technical virtuosity (taiyari) and made him a finished concert artist.

But his newly found guru was fated to breathe his last in 1937 at a very young age, and at the very pinnacle of powers. The grief-struck Mallikarjun now approached Alladiya Khan himself and requested that he be given further training in several aspects of Jaipur gayaki. The Ustad said that his own advanced years stood in the way and therefore directed him to his younger son, Bhurji Khan.

His training continued under Bhurji Khan, during which Mallikarjun learnt the dhrupadic elements in the Jaipur style, as well as the rare, complex and compound raagas specific to the gharana. As Mallikarjun was to confess in his later years, the two gurus were like two perennial rivers from which he never drew enough to slake his unquenchable thirst for music.

In the meantime, Mallikarjun got married and started a family. Yet, amid all his domestic responsibilities, he continued his tapas with unfaltering absorption and application. He would shunt between Kolhapur, his guru`s abode, and Dharwad during those difficult but happy years, learning all that he could as also giving concerts. Unlike several of his contemporaries Mallikarjun never dreamt of moving to Pune or Bombay in order to further his professional career or improve his standard of living. His outwardly quiet life, its routine joys and despairs, as also his intense riyaz and his deep spirituality were all bound up with the simplicity, peace and quiet of Dharwad. He was thoroughly content with the simple but sincere audience he got in his village. The city lights figured in his life and career time and again. Success and recognition came in many forms from the 1950s on. Yet none of these things affected him as a person or as a musician.

The aesthetic subtlety and complexity of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana shine forth in Mansoor`s singing. His smooth and sweet voice, his full-throated voice production, devoid of nasality or gruffness and his incredible breath-control gave him a significant edge in singing the complex Jaipur gayaki fluently. In fact, his supreme control over his voice gives it a sense of effortlessness as he shifts from the bandish to taans and back. The steadiness and sinuousness of his badhat give a sense of fullness and control. For, unlike Ustad Amir Khan, he never banks on the slow raagavistaar, or on fast embellishments like Bade Ghulam. Those looking for stately vistaars of profound explorations of tonal richness will not find them here. Instead, he `tames` his melodic sense to fit into the fluid carriage of rhythm. Mansoor`s style is neither needlessly placid nor breathtakingly supple. It occupies the middle ground between melody and rhythm, insofar as he deploys both in mutually reinforcing ways. Simply put, melody conditioned by rhythm is the hallmark of his style as it is of his gharana.

His raagavistaar commences with no detailed aochar at all. In fact, his `no-nonsense` approach makes his openings sprightlier and more energetic than that of his Kirana or Agra counterparts. Mallikarjun prefers to open with a madhya laya khayal which gives his rhythm-melody complex certain nimbleness and tension to begin with. Unlike the Kirana singers, he does not develop the raaga in a linear fashion. Instead, he fills up each aavartan with embellishments. So each new tala cycle is unique insofar as he fills it with a combination of raaga elaborations, intricate and subtle embellishments and varieties of fast taans using his spontaneity. Each aavartan send the imagination into a frenzied search for fresh melodic possibilities. What one sees in Mansoor`s style is the restlessness of a luxuriant imagination bursting with musical ideas. The composure and the agility with which he arrived at the sam of every rhythmic cycle, after a series of improvisations using the lines of the mukhda, was something the listeners looked forward to. The tempo of tala itself remains soothingly constant providing the necessary framework; only the speed of vocal rendition or laya is varied by Mansoor in several ways.

Mansoor`s silken voice, with its `swinging` quality, weaves complex patterns of the raaga in the way a spider weaves a web. His voice is so smooth that when he switches from badhat to taans the shift is hardly perceptible at all to the listener. In Mallikarjun`s gayaki, alaap and taan, together with other embellishments, go to make a seamless matrix. His singing therefore gives no signs of effort or strain even when he sings dazzlingly; the golden mean he discovered was so finished and so polished.

True to his gharana traditions, Mansoor was perhaps one of the few singers who could render rare and complex raagas with effortless ease and enviable maturity. In fact, he usually avoided singing prachalit (popular) raagas. If singers from other gharanas sang Mian ki Todi, Allaiya Bilawal, Yaman, Bihag or Darbari, Mansoor sang Bahaduri Todi, Yamani Bilawal, Bihagda, Razia Kannada, Sawani Kalyan, Khokar, Khat or Shudh Nat. In fact, these raagas have come to be associated with him. Few could carry these raagas off with the assurance he possessed. Intricate structures seemed all the more beguiling when he sang them with such poise. Yet, on several occasions when he sang prachalit raagas, he reeled off bandish after bandish showing rarely seen facets of these raagas. Like his illustrious Jaipur-Atrauli gurus, Mansoor too was a storehouse of compositions. The number of bandishes he knew was, reportedly, mind-boggling. Such was his scholarship, such was his dexterity.

Mallikarjun`s recorded music, which for the most part maintains a high standard, gives everybody a fairly reasonable idea about his style and approach. Being a dedicated and conscientious artist, he always sought to achieve the highest degree of perfection both in his recitals as also in his recordings. His rendition of Gaud Malhar, Bahaduri Todi, Jaunpuri, Bihagda, Shivmat Bhairav, Ramdasi Malhar, Nand, Yaman Kalyan, Lalita Gauri, Shree Nat Bihag, Sampurna Malkauns and Maru Bihag are outstanding. His Gaud Malhar shows the weaving of a plethora of translucently beautiful silken patterns of melody inside the loom of tala. Everything about the rendition is superb, starting with the immediate rapport he makes with the listener, all the way through his perfectly planned sequences of soothing phrases and improvisations. Bahaduri Todi swiftly sets the prayerful note in an ardent and sustained manner. It becomes evident that Mansoor is tuned in to a higher melody, to higher intensity when he goes through the interlacing patterns of rhythm and melodic movements with feeling and verve.

Mansoor`s Nand (live recording) is a truly memorable experience. One only has to compare it with Amir Khan`s more romantic rendition to understand the difference between a meditative singer and subtle one. In fact these are probably two of best-recorded interpretations of the raaga one has with him/her by two stalwarts. His Shree (live recording) and Lalit Gauri (one of his favourites), evoke that affecting inwardness so characteristic of these sandhiprakash raagas. Mansoor`s Ramdasi Malhar is a steady and powerful rendition of this monsoon raaga. The elevating and the emotional come together here. One can see deep feeling interweaving beautifully with classical control. The effect is exquisite. One perceives few signs of tiredness or exhaustion in this rendition even though the recording was made during his last years. It is indeed one`s good fortune that he left behind a legacy of over 80 hours of recorded music with the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. These would eventually prove to be a valuable treasure trove for students of music, scholars and passionate lovers of music in future.

Mansoor lived outwardly like a householder, but was a renunciant within. His music derives its fervour and his life its simplicity from his devout temperament. A great devotee of Shiva, he used to get up during the early hours of dawn and walk up to the local temple even after age and ailments took their toll on his health. In fact, by his own confession, he never differentiated between his devotion to god and the dedication to his art. The sincerity one sees in the person and his art is one that emanates straight from the heart.

Mansoor`s commitment to music was total. In fact its rhythm was indistinguishable from his pulse. A few weeks before his death, with his lungs racked with cancer, he sang for AIR Dharwad as he did at the Lingayat Math in his wheezing voice, but with tremendous enthusiasm. Even when admitted to a hospital in Bangalore during his last days, he chose to regale the inmates and visitors with his singing. When unable to sing, he would ask his visitors with his son Rajashekar to delineate his favourite raagas and sang them inwardly after his own fashion. Such intensity and passion are indeed rare.

Mansoor leaves behind no known disciples worthy of taking up his mantle. His standards were lofty and his demands exacting for even the brilliant student of music. He expected nothing short of total dedication and all-consuming passion for the art from those that wanted to be disciples. His expectations from them were no different from what he expected of himself. Anything less would have been a compromise. His son Rajashekhar Mansoor follows his father`s style quite ably.

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Ustad Bismillah Khan

Bismillah Khan was born at Bhirung Raut Ki Gali, in Dumraon, Bihar as the second son of Paigambar Khan and Mitthan. He was named as Qamaruddin[1] to rhyme with Shamsuddin, their first son. His grandfather, Rasool Baksh Khan uttered "Bismillah" (the basmala) after looking at the newborn, thus he was named Bismillah Khan.

His ancestors were court musicians and used to play in Naqqar khana in the princely states of Bhojpur, now in Bihar. His father was a shehnai player in the court of Maharaja Keshav Prasad Singh of Dumraon Estate, Bihar.

He received his training under his uncle, the late Ali Baksh 'Vilayatu', a shehnai player attached to Varanasi's Vishwanath Temple.

Though a pious Shi'ite Muslim, he was also, like many Indian musicians, regardless of religion, a devotee of Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of wisdom and arts, and often played at Hindu temples, including the famous Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, on the banks of the river Ganga. He also performed for spiritual master Prem Rawat.

Bismillah Khan was perhaps single handedly responsible for making the shehnai a famous classical instrument. He brought the shehnai to the center stage of Indian music with his concert in the Calcutta All India Music Conference in 1937. He was credited with having almost monopoly over the instrument as he and the shehnai are almost synonyms.

Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India and had played shenai to audience across the world.He was known to be devoted to his art form that he referred to shehnai as his begum, wife in Urdu, after his wife died. On his death, as an honour, his shehnai was also buried along with him.He was known for his vision of spreading peace and love through music.

On August 17, 2006, Khan was taken ill and admitted to the Heritage Hospital, Varanasi for treatment. He died after four days on August 21, 2006 due to a cardiac arrest. He is survived by five sons, three daughters and a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Government of India declared a day of national mourning on his death. His body along with a Shehnai was buried at Fatemain burial ground of old Varanasi under a neem tree with 21-gun salute from Indian Army.



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Amjad Ali Khan

Amjad Ali Khan was born to Hafiz Ali Khan, is the sixth-generation sarod player in his family and his ancestors have developed and shaped the instrument over several hundred years. His forefathers came from Afghanistan to India's relaxed music atmosphere and brought the Rabab which later developed into Sarod.

The modern sarod has undergone modifications to improve its tonal quality, notably from Allauddin Khan and his brother Ayet Ali Khan of the Senia Maihar Gharana.

Khan was taught by his father Hafiz Ali Khan, a musician to the royal family of Gwalior; he was born to the Gwalior Bangash lineage rooted in the Senia Bangash School of Music and is the sixth generation inheritor of this lineage.

Khan has developed a unique style of playing the sarod. The key innovations in his style are compositions based on vocal music, the technical ability to play highly complex phrases (ekhara taans), at times with ascending or descending volume scales on the sarod spanning three octaves with equal emphasis on the composition.

There are two schools of sarod playing – one in which the strings are stopped by the fingertips and the other in which the strings are stopped by the finger-nails of the left hand (as practised by Amjad Ali Khan). This is what makes the clear ringing sound and is one of the things that makes it so difficult to play. Khan is also noted for producing a wider variety of sounds on the sarod using bends up to 7 notes by sliding across the fingerboard. Khan has also stated that this extended bends is an advantage over fretted string instruments like the sitar.

Khan uses the traditional sarod minus Allauddin Khan's changes to the tuning and string configurations. The only modern trait that he has adopted into his instrument is the round drum of the resonating chamber (the traditional sarod has two jod and chikari strings and 11 tarab strings). His base frequency is also lower than the other schools. His instrument is made by Hemen Sen of Kolkata, who also makes the sarod for other leading maestros such as Ali Akbar Khan.

Amjad's playing places much emphasis on percussive right-hand plectrum work characteristic of the Afghan rabab-based idiom of the early sarod players. His chief innovation are his ekhara taans (complex high speed staccato passages), something which many sarod players find very difficult to do. Paraphrasing his words "I asked my father why the sarod could not keep up with sitar when it came to taans....my father explained that the sarod was a much more difficult instrument to play, not having frets ... it is then I resolved to develop a style where I could match sitar like taans...".

Khan carries forth the guru tradition that he inherited from his father Hafiz Ali Khan. He has dedicated many years of his life to teaching students from around the world, including his two songs Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, Debojyoti Bose (brother of renowned tabla artist Kumar Bose), Rajendra Prasanna, and film composer Stephen Day.

Khan has had a successful career spanning over 40 years and continues to be one of the busiest classical musicians in India.

Khan received the three national Padma Awards: Padma Shri in 1975, Padma Bhushan in 1991, and Padma Vibhushan in 2001,and was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1989.

He was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2004 and on April 8, 2007, he was honoured with the Key to the City award by Kathy Taylor Mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma state, for his long-standing contribution to the Indian Classical Music.

Houston and Nashville has conferred him honorary citizenship in 1997. Massachusetts has declared April 20 as the 'Amjad Ali Khan Day' in 1984. Tulsa is the third US city to confer honorary citizenship to him.

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Nikhil Banerjee

Nikhil Banerjee was born in Calcutta into a Brahmin family, where music as a profession was discouraged, although his father, Jitendranath Banerjee, who was a sitarist by hobby, taught him the instrument. Young Nikhil grew into a child prodigy, won an all-Bengal sitar competition at the age of nine and soon was playing for All India Radio. At the time, his sister was a student of khyal great Amir Khan, who became a life-long influence. Jitendranath approached Mushtaq Ali Khan to take the boy as a student, and Banerjee studied with him for his initial training.[citation needed]

In 1947 Banerjee met Allauddin Khan, who was to become his main guru along with his son, Ali Akbar Khan. Both were sarod players. Banerjee went to Allauddin Khan's concerts and was desperate to have him as his teacher. Allauddin Khan did not want to take on more students, but changed his mind after listening to one of Banerjee's radio broadcasts. Though Allauddin Khan was Banerjee's main teacher, he also learned from Ali Akbar Khan, the son of Allaudin Khan, for many years.

After Maihar, Banerjee embarked on a concert career that was to take him to all corners of the world and last right up to his death. All through his life he kept taking lessons from Ustad Allauddin Khan and his children, Ustad Ali Akbar and Smt. Annapurna Devi. Perhaps reflecting his early upbringing, he always remained a humble musician, and was content with much less limelight than a player of his stature could have vied for. For him, music-making was a spiritual rather than a worldly path.[2] Even so, in 1968, he was decorated with the Padma Shri and posthumously received also the Padma Bhushan; at the time of his death by heart attack, he was a faculty member at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta. Nikhil Banerjee had at least one Disciple - Pandit Sukhraj Jhalla of Ahmedabad, India - who at age 90 continues to teach and is the Founder of the Ghadharva Vidhlay Music School in Ahemdabad India. He is one of the most sought after teachers of Indian Classical Music in the world and teaches very few students one on one - Ustad Kadar Khan's (of the Kalavant School in New York) son Shakir Khan and Anand Vyas are presently studying with him in India. Bannerjee recorded only a handfull of recordings during his lifetime but a series of live recordings continue to be released posthumously making sure that his musical legacy is preserved for posterity. He did not like very much recording within the confines of the studio, though his early studio recordings with EMI India such as Lalit , Purya Kalyan and Malkauns are now considered to be classic renditions of these Ragas. The posthumous live albums, many of which were brought out around the turn of the 21st Century by Raga Records in New York, and Chandadhara of Germany, are widely considered to be the finest documents of his playing. Today, he is regarded as one of the greatest sitarists of the 20th century.[

His interpretation of ragas was usually traditional, although he would sometimes take liberties with the raga in a moment of inspiration. Some people say he created a raga Manomanjari of his own, mixing ideas from Kalavati and Puriya, while others attribute it to Ustad Allaudin Khan.

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