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| This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen magazine #102 (October / November 2002). The magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription. |
The son Alam Khan was devoted to the music of Jimi Hendrix. He was so devoted that he performed on an electric guitar in a band with other young children who'd pluck away to songs like "Red House," whose lyrics tell the story of a failed attempt to reunite with a lover.
"Classical music is not that entertaining to a young child," said Alam Khan, explaining why he preferred Hendrix over his father's early attempts to have him play sarode.
Without a trace of disingenuousness, Ali Akbar Khan smiled at the memory of those days, saying he was just happy that Alam was playing music. In fact, Ali Akbar Khan let one of his students teach Alam many of Hendrix's songs, believing in his "feeling" that Alam might eventually embrace classical Indian compositions.
That feeling was right, though it took two years for Alam to rediscover the sarode, and more years still for him to be proficient enough to play publicly with his famous father. Today, it's fair to say that the 20-year-old Alam is a disciplined disciple of Ali Akbar Khan, though it would be a mistake to say he is dedicating himself entirely to the ragas of his dad's musical tradition. Alam regularly performs in a hip-hop band called The Prolifics and in a jazz-funk band, but he has shown such promise as a sarodist that many observers say he may one day reach the same caliber of Ali Akbar Khan and eventually be known as his successor.
For evidence of this possible ascension, they say, look at and listen to From Father to Son, the album released earlier this year by Alam Madina Music Productions (the independent label run by Mary Khan, Alam's mother). Recorded at a church in Berkeley, From Father to Son features father and son doing a traditional evening raga, "Ragini Puriya Dhanasri," which shows Alam can play note-for-note with a man whom the late Yehudi Menuhin once called "the greatest musician in the world."
Ali Akbar Khan is now 80 years old. He walks with the aid of a cane (which he leans on in the cover photograph of From Father to Son), but that has not curtailed his concert schedule nor his teaching commitment at the music college in San Rafael, California, that has borne his name for 30 years. There, you can find him leading at least four classes a week, including the most basic vocal and instrumental workshops where young and old first-time students discover whether they have the temperament and self-discipline to learn classical Indian music.
Khansahib, as Ali Akbar Khan is called by his students and friends, traces his musical lineage to Mian Tansen, the great 16th-century court musician of the Moghul emperor Akbar. His father, Baba Allauddin Khan, was an iconic figure who created the first written notation of Indian music. One of Khan's legacies is having helped popularize Indian classical music outside of India. Along with sitarist Ravi Shankar, it was Khan who introduced Americans to Indian ragas and scales. He first performed in the United States in 1955.
For many pop music fans, a defining image of Khan is from 1971, when — at George Harrison's request — he played the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden with Shankar and tabla player Alla Rakha.
"The audience was shouting louder than the music," Khan remembered. "You couldn't even hear the notes. When we got started, it was so loud that I ran to the bathroom to get toilet paper to plug in my ears."
This is an excerpt from an article in Dirty Linen #102 (Oct./Nov. '02). Read the full text in the magazine, available via subscription or on newsstands and in bookstores.
