Ustad brought India on world music map
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan once said music is the only thing you can share with a million people and you don’t lose, you gain. After sharing his music all over the world, the sarod maestro died in San Francisco on Friday morning, following a prolonged kidney ailment. He was 88. He is survived by his wife Mary and 11 children and an extraordinary musical legacy that includes the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California.

Ali Akbar Khan was born in 1922 in East Bengal (Bangladesh) and, like so many children born into musical families, learned how to play various instruments before he could spell. His father, Baba Allauddin Khan, was one of the great names of Hindustani music. “For us, as a family, music is like food. When you need it you don’t have to explain why, because it is basic to life,” Ali Akbar Khan had said.

In his early twenties, he made his first recording in Lucknow for HMV. He then became the court musician for the Maharaja of Jodhpur where he worked for seven years.

In 1955, on the request of violin master Yehudi Menuhin, Ali Akbar Khan first visited the US and performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By the sixties, the West was clamouring for more and he pushed India on the world music map, with a little help from his friend Pandit Ravi Shankar (who was earlier married to Khansahib’s sister, Annapurna Devi).

Responding to a wave of interest in the West, he began teaching and living in the US and, in 1967, founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in California, where he had been teaching since, along with tabla stalwart Ustad Zakir Hussain. Khansahib also opened a branch of his college in Basel, Switzerland, run by his disciple Ken Zuckerman, where he taught on his world tours.

Speaking from London, Ustad Zakir Hussain said, “He was one of the greatest musicians ever, a musician’s musician. His is the biggest influence on instrumentalists today. He totally transformed the way the sarod is played. To me, he was a mentor and guide who helped discover my musical expression. I shall miss him terribly.”
Sitar master Pandit Arvind Parikh said, “Every music has a what and a how, content and expression. He was great in both. He had his own unique style which was very inwardlooking and introspective. He was one of the most creative musicians.”

A recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Khansahib has been described as India’s Bach and is known for creating many compositions. He composed and recorded music for films, including Aandhiyan by Chetan Anand, Householder by Ivory/Merchant, Devi by Satyajit Ray, and Little Buddha by Bernardo Bertolucci. His family and students are currently in the process of preserving a treasury of compositions written by Baba Allauddin Khan for, as Khansahib had said, “Indian music is like a river that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man’s soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don’t want it to die. It must spread all over the world.”