Ustad Vilayat Khan

Ustad Vilayat Khan is regarded by many as being one of the greatest North Indian musicians of this century. Coupled with this reputation is his indomitable and incorruptible character which renders him, in the eyes of many of his followers, as a legend in his own time.

Khanshahib was born into a family of musicians who trace their lineage six or seven generations back to the Moghul courts and ultimately to Miyan Tansen, the court musician of the Emperor Akbar (late 16th century). His grandfather, Imdad Khan, and his father, Enyet Khan, were recognized as leading instrumentalists of their time. The date of Vilayat Khan's birth is the first point of controversy, some saying 1924, others 1926 or 1927. He says 1928. He studied music under his father's guidance from a very early age and needless to say he was precocious. After his father's death in 1938, he continued his training under his mother, Bashiran Begum, his maternal grandfather, Bande Hussain Khan and maternal uncle, Zinda Hussain Khan, all accomplished vocalists.

Khanshahib shot to fame in 1944 when he was invited to perform at a music festival in Bombay. The audience applause was such that he was obliged to play five encores, and so the legend begins. One hears of the time he performed later in Bombay when all seats were sold well in advance and the organizers placed loudspeakers outside the theater and the streets were crowded with ten thousand standing in rapt attention.

Khanshahib has by now achieved the highest acclaim all over the world and has performed in the most prestigious theaters and has the unique distinction of having performed in Buckingham Palace for Queen Elizabeth II. It is also a fact, however, that when he was finally awarded the Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan awards in 1964 and 1968 - the highest recognition given by the Government of India - he refused them on the grounds that the committee was incompetent to judge artistic creativity.

It is his extraordinary musical creativity that has made Vilayat into a legend. We now tend to take for granted so much of his inventiveness, and yet he continues to come up with something new. Listening to recordings from the pre-World War II period is the only way to experience just how much Vilayat has changed the nature of sitar music to its present "singing" (gayaki) vocal style. The new tunings of the drone strings he has introduced (in spite of reducing the number of melody/drone strings from seven to six) and the sustaining power of modern sitars, enable sitarists to sound as many as ten or more notes through side-ways deflections of the playing strings. One only needs to hear Khanshahib illustrate these features by singing phrases and then replicating them on the sitar - as he has often done even in formal concerts - to understand something of his immense contributions to North Indian classical music.