During their lifetimes, Ustad
Vilayat Ali Khan and Pandit Ravi
Shankar, were regarded as the two ‘best’ sitar players in India. Fans and critics divided into ‘Vilayat’ and
‘Ravi’ camps, each extolling the greater brilliance of their respective icons.
The media fired popular imagination by painting them as intractable rivals,
each dismissive of the other. That they
were both accomplished musicians is beyond doubt but, in actuality, they
enjoyed a personal friendship that was cordial and respectful despite comments
like this by Vilayat Khan sahib: “Ravi Shankar
has popularised India’s music all over the world at the cost of his music.”
Ustad Vilayat
Ali Khan came from a well established and highly regarded
musical pedigree that traced its origins to Hindu Rajputs who converted to
Islam in the Mughal period and eventually settled in the humid greenery of
Bengal. Trained as a singer, and indeed
wanting more than anything to be a vocalist, Vilayat Khan settled on sitar to maintain the family tradition. His
grandfather, Ustad Imdad Khan, was
an icon of the sitar who had an entire gharana,
Imdadkhani, named after him. Inayat
Khan, Vilayat’s father had also scaled the highest rungs of fame on the
sitar as well. So, there ultimately, was no other choice for young Vilayat.
You would never know that the sitar was his ‘second
choice’ because what characterised Ustad
Vilayat Khan’s reputation was a total devotion to the instrument. He was a
purist. The raga was a sacred thing;
almost a being. It was not to be trivialized
or corrupted by the introduction of rouge or foreign sensibilities. This puritanical stance, was at heart, what
separated him from his great peer, Ravi
Shankar. Ustad Vilayat Khan sahib could never have hung out with the Beatles, or tried to fuse Western
classical music, let alone jazz with the raga.
Throughout his life he did travel extensively overseas
and indeed, he was one of the earliest Indian musicians to gain an
international following. But he never
strayed from what he understood to be the essential and only way of playing,
which was a way of incredible beauty and articulation. As Ken Hunt reported
when Ustadji passed away in 2004, “Khan's
forte was classical interpretation in the old improvised style of spontaneous
composition. His trademark melodicism was imbued with emotion and passion. His
skill for finding intellectual solutions to unlocking a raga's heart, especially with unexpected melodic twists, kept rasikas (music connoisseurs) glued to
his every note and phrase. His speciality was gayaki ang (singing style), in which the sitar replicates and
replaces the human voice.”
Tonight, I’m really pleased to present a recently released recording of Ustad Vilayat Ali Khan from India’s
National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) archives. He plays a stunning hour long version of raga Bilaskhani Todi, a morning raga.
It is said that this raga was created by Bilas Khan, son of Miyan Tansen.
Bilas Khan is said to have created raga Bilaskhani Todi after Tansen's death; an interesting legend
of this improvisation (it differs only in detail from Tansen's Todi), has it
that Bilas composed it while
grief-stricken at the wake itself, and that Tansen's corpse moved one hand in approval of the new melody.
(Wikipedia)
Track Listing:
01.
Raga Bilaskhani Todi
02.
Raga Sindhu Kafi
2 comments:
Thank you!
Mofonk
The greatest indeed !!
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