By Harihar Swarup
In his centenary year, celebrating, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, reticent sarod legend, who took refuge in Hindustani classical music—a system that challenged him but rewarded him with stillness and equanimity.
At the capital’s Shri Shankar Lal Concert Hall inside Modern School, Barakhamba Road, California-based sarod player Alam Khan opened the headlining act with Chandranandan, a raga created by his father and Guru Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. “Smaran”, the concert organized by SRF foundation, with industrialist and music Presario Arun Bhagat Ram at the helm, was the finale of two-day festival in December to celebrate Ali Akbar khan’s centenary. In a space that can usually hold 1,000 people on any given day, there were about 75 people in attendance, mostly comprising those who had heard Khan until he passed away in 2009, and were curious about his 40-year-old “half American” son and if he could live up to the illustrious legacy.
Alam sat quietly, his head bowed down, his eyes shut, as he entered a meditative alaap of luminous evening raga, bearing a reminder of Khan’s demeanour. With the strumming of those first notes, Alam was home. With no acrobatics—the new normal in sarod concert —he focused on the raga with intricate playing and meeds (slide of the notes), so delicate and tender, that it reminded one of the musical times that have now become the stuff of the lore. “This is the baaj (playing) of old times. This is the blood taking,” said Anita Singh, vice chairperson and director, Indian Music Society and member of Executive Committee and governing Council, INTACH (Indian National Trust for Arts and cultural Heritage), after the concert. This was one of the year’s best concert and it was strange how it was the most under-attended. Most likely because the heavy weights had already performed and not many knew Alam Khan.
“I am sure he (khan}, would be happy that we are trying to carry on his style. It is our job to maintain that ethos, that feeling behind the note that love, despite new trends in classical music, continues. We are trying to find beauty in those one or two notes. I have come to realize that it’s better to play a couple of notes in tune, with feeling, than a thousand without”, said Alam.
The story of Chandranandan’s creation goes back to the 1940s and to the HMV recording studio in Mumbai’s Fort where well known musicologist and the company’s legendary recording executive, G N Joshi, threw a curveball. He asked Khan, then an emerging sarod player, to record something he hadn’t heard before. “I felt he was insulting, my Guru, my father (Ustad Alludauddin Khan) by asking me to play a raga that he had never….. but he meant the other way….may be my father taught me something that (he)hadn’t heard. He wanted something unique for the recording. I was angry, but I was in good musical mood. So I was nervous for a second, then remembered, my teacher, my father and said I was ready to record. I played a few notes, little alaap, little gat (melody)”. Khan said in US-born music historian and musician Peter Lavezzoli’s book—the Dawn of Indian music in West.
He spawned a new Raga, creating by blending notes from the family of Kaunsi ragas. At a time when the raga was performed for hours to find its colour and nature, Khan gave feeling of a new one in three minutes (the time Khan had on the disc). The idiomatic framing was majestic and yet sombre. “When you blend araag together you must blend the flavours like a punch…. You can’t taste the individual flavour but new taste is there,” Khan adds in the book. (IPA Service)
