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Britain-based filmmaker-writer Nasreen Munni Kabir has collaborated with A. R. Rahman to bring out a documentary on shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan, writes Madhusree Chatterjee Shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan had "music on his face", remembers Britain-based filmmaker-writer Nasreen Munni Kabir, who struggled to bring out a documentary on the famous bard of Benaras until the intervention of composer A. R. Rahman.
The 50-minute documentary, Bismillah of Benaras, has been made by Kabir with support from the BBC. She collaborated with Rahman, a Bismillah fan, who helped her tie up with Sony Music for distribution. He also is the presenter of the movie. "I conceived it in 2002 and worked for nearly nine months on it. It was a desire I cherished since the 1990s when I saw Bismillah Khan at a concert in the British Museum," says. "There was music on his face. It took 20 years for the dream to come true," she says about Khan, who died five years ago. "It was a privilege just to hear him speak of his life," Kabir adds. "I pitched the idea to BBC in 2002, but I could not find a distributor because no one was willing to distribute a classical music DVD. I had to wait for five years. No one was willing to take it till I met A. R. Rahman while shooting a documentary on him. He agreed to present the DVD and find a distributor," says Kabir.
The documentary, which explores the life, work and warm personality of Bismillah Khan, is based on interviews and exclusive concert footage filmed at the Khan family home. The documentary charts Khan’s journey as a musician from his childhood, which he spent learning the shehnai, from guru Ali Buksh. Khan brought the shehnai to mainstream classical music at a concert during the Calcutta All-India Music Conference in 1937. Born in 1916 to a Dalit Muslim family of court musicians in Bihar, Khan moved to Varanasi at the age of six where he trained under his guru, a musician at the Vishwanath Temple. A devotee of Saraswati, Khan, a Shia Muslim, often played in temples. Honoured with the Bharat Ratna, he was one of the few exponents of the instrument the world over. On his death in 2006, his shehnai was buried with him. Kabir, associated with Channel 4 of BBC, has made a 46-part series on Indian movies, Movie Mahal, In Search of Guru Dutt and Follow that Star — a profile of Amitabh Bachchan. In 2005, she produced a two-part documentary on Shah Rukh Khan, The Inner and Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan. — IANS
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