|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Boro Baba: Ustad Alauddin Khan Ustad Alauddhin Khan Sahib stood tall among scores of great proponents of Indian classical music. He was a unique man and unique musician. He started as a tabla player and mastered the now eclipsed instruments like the Sursingar and the Surbahar. Khan Sahib played the violin and created an orchestra of Indian musical instruments, the Maihar Band.
Indian classical music is a temple-born art. Devotion and internalisation are primary requirements for approaching the skill within. The medium such as Saraswati Veena, Sursingar and Surbahar is next only to the human voice. Mastering these instruments to such decree is a monumental effort, of sadhana and devotion. Khan Sahib had both of them in plenty, and the book records them with a first-hand account. It is also a faithful record of teaching methods of the guru-shishya prampara. The book is a nostalgic journey, a recollection, a tribute and homage of the author to the great master musician and teacher in the true sense of a Guru. Khan Sahib’s childhood, days of hardship, burning desire to learn and explore the infinitely deep and vast universe of Indian classical music are relived by his great-granddaughter, with a daughter’s love and humility. Khan Sahib was not only legendary musician himself, his produced legendary shishyas too. The best inheritor of his tradition and musical treasure is in fact his reclusive daughter, Annapurna Devi. She too gives a deep insight into her introduction to the book. Khan Sahib once told a discerning listener that if you want to hear raga in its pristine purity, you should listen to his daughter playing the Surbahar. The world of music has been deprived of experiencing the music of Surbahar by her unilateral sanyas from public playing. Even after the fall of the Mughal patronage after 1857, smaller rajas, nawabs and zamindars patronised the arts and were discerning listeners. A complete canvass of the country dotted with patrons in Calcutta, Rampur, Mysore, Indore, Udaipur et al can be seen in the book. Eventually, Khan Sahib was adopted by Maihar, where Raja Sahib provided him with the best security that produced students like his son Ali Akhan Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerji and of course, his daughter, Annapurna Devi. Through them a number of other great exponents of this India art emerged. The author, in fact, has done great service in documenting the environment in which a genius was made to blossom. The book tells the reader about the man and also of the Indian cultural environment now lost in concert halls and instant, short order production of artists being labelled as Khan Sahibs and Panditjis without facing the test of time which all great art and artists had to face to get the titles. The book has rare vintage photographs that make history come alive. It is an affectionate and fitting tribute, a labour of love and homage to the founder of a great musical tradition the Maihar Gharana of the Hindustani classical music.
|
||
|
|
||
For
his own exposition of music, he chose the Sarod as the instrument. But
before that he had delved deep and rooted his sensibilities and
enriched himself in the tradition of Beenkars, playing the Sursingar
and the Surbahar. These instruments are most suited to delve in the
finesse of ‘Swar’, so essential for exploitation and delineation
of the richness of a Raag.