Ustad Ali Akbar Khan passes away: (1922 - 2009)

Ustad Ali Akbar Khansahib was born on April 14, 1922 in the village of Shibpur, Comilla, in present-day Bangladesh (then East Bengal), to revered musician and teacher, Baba Allauddin Khansahib and Madina Begum. Soon after his birth, the family returned to Maihar (in present day Madhya Pradesh, India) where his father was the primary court musician for the Maharaja of the princely state.

He began his studies in music at the age of three, studying vocal music from his father and drums from his uncle, Fakir Aftabuddin. His father also trained him on several other instruments, but decided finally that he must concentrate on the sarod and on vocal music. For over twenty years, he trained, practising18 hours a day. After that, his father continued to teach him until he was over 100 years old.

He gave his first public performance when he was 13 and made his first recording in Lucknow when he was 20. The next year, he became the court musician to the Maharaja of Jodhpur, working there for seven years until the Maharaja's untimely death. The state of Jodhpur bestowed upon him his first title, that of Ustad, or Master Musician, when he was a relatively young man. His father merely laughed at the thought! But later, when the patriarch was a centenarian, he told his son one day that he was very proud of him: "I am so pleased with your work in music that I will do something which is very rare. As your Guru and father, I am giving you a title, Swara Samrat (Emperor of Melody)." Many years later, Khansahib received the title of Hathi Saropao and Dowari Tajeem at the Jodhpur Palace's Golden Jubilee Celebration in 1993.

At the request of Lord Menuhin, Ustad Ali Akbar Khansahib first visited the United States in 1955 and performed an unprecedented concert at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also made the first Western LP recording of Indian classical music and was the first to perform Indian music on US television on Allistair Cooke's Omnibus, sowing the seed for the wave of popularity of Indian music in the 1960's. 

Khansahib founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Kolkata in 1956. Later, recognising the extraordinary interest and abilities of his Western students, he began teaching in America in 1965. In 1967, he founded the Ali Akbar College of Music, which moved to Marin County, California, the following year, maintaining a teaching schedule of 6 classes a week for 9 months of the year. He also opened a branch of his college in Basel, Switzerland, run by his disciple Ken Zuckerman, where he used to teach once a year.

Khansahib had composed and recorded music for films throughout his career. He composed extensively in India beginning with "Aandhiyan" by Chetan Anand (1953) and went on to create music for "House Holder" by Ivory/Merchant (their first film), "Khudita Pashan" (or "Hungry Stone") for which he won the "Best Musician of the Year" award, "Devi" by Satyajit Ray and, in America, "Little Buddha" by Bernardo Bertolucci.

He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1967 and Padma Vibhushan in 1989, as well as a plethora of other awards and honours. In 1997, Khansahib received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honour in the traditional arts, which was presented by Mrs. Hillary Clinton at a ceremony in the White House. This followed a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1991. He was nominated for the Grammy awards five times between 1970 and 1998.

On June 18, 2009, he passed away in San Francisco in the US after a prolonged kidney ailment. He was 87 years old. He is survived by his wife Mary, three sons and a daughter.

Moments with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan