Ustad Ali Akbar Khan: The true artiste
The sobriquet of “Indian Johann Sebastian Bach” was not earned overnight by sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. A child prodigy, the brilliant performer, composer and teacher once said, “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.”
Few could have thought that the young boy who gave his first public performance at the age of 13 in Allahabad would go on to win a phenomenal body of admirers both in the subcontinent and the West. Born in Shibpur village, Brahmanbaria in present-day Bangladesh, Khan began training in classical music and instruments at the age of three under his father Allauddin Khan, regarded as the greatest figure in Hindustani classical music at the time. In his early 20s, Ali Akbar Khan made his first recording in Lucknow for the HMV label. The next year he became court musician to the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanwant Singh. There he taught and composed music besides giving recitals. He was accorded the title of Ustad by the Maharaja.
In Bombay he was acclaimed as a composer of several film scores: these included “Aandhiyan” by Chetan Anand, “The Householder” by Merchant-Ivory and “Khudito Pashan” for which he won the Best Musician of the Year Award. He went on to give music for “Devi” by Satyajit Ray and “Little Buddha” by Bernardo Bertolucci.
In the meanwhile he had recorded a series of 78 rpm disks at the HMV Studios in Bombay. His brilliant compositions earned him much fame. The West too was won over by Khan's music. Along with his performances he founded many institutions of repute like the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta, Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley, California which he later moved to San Rafael, California.
Khan's jugalbandis with Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee and violinist L. Subramaniam were legendary. Madison Square Garden in New York city swayed to Shankar and Khan's opening set of Indian classical music at the Concert for Bangladesh on August 1, 1971 where famous names like Geroge Harrison, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr also gave performances to raise funds for refugees from East Pakistan following the infamous genocide. His brilliant compositions and mastery of the sarod earned him the Padma Vibhushan in India.
Khan spent the latter part of his life in the US. He passed away in San Francisco on June 18, 2009. Today marks the seventh death anniversary of the Sarod Maestro.