Vilayat khan vs ravi shankar biography
Pt Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan: The rivalry that never was
So, should be it with Pt Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan. As the world celebrated Shankar’s birth centenary on April 7 with musicians across the globe paying glowing tributes online, one question kept haunting the mind.If Khan saab was around today, how would he have reacted to the centenary celebrations of his ‘Robu-da’?
Unfortunately, the music corridors have often resonated with tales of their ambivalent affection. For those looking for sensationalism, it would be easy to look at the scenario from a prism of “rivalry of sorts”. But doing so would mean agreeing to be myopic and falling into a trap that projected a competition between the Etawah and the Maihar gharanas of Indian classical music. It would mean failing to understand the ideologies of two legends, their individualism and their ways of life.
Pt Ravi Shankar with Ustad Shujaat Khan
Khan was eight years junior to Shankar. His son, Ustad Shujaat Khan, refuses to entertain any ‘dramatic’ emphasis on the so-called discordant notes while analyzing the sense and sensibilities of the two icons. “If my father was alive today, he would have wished Ravi Shankarji a place in the musical heaven. It was a relationship that had many facets. On the one hand, they were contemporaries. Both were playing the sitarand were legends of the time. I don’t know what people make it out to be. But, I remember my father enjoyed his music and was always very respectful of Ravi Shankarji. He would call my father Vilayatbhai. Whenever they met, they would share their old stories and only spoke to each other in Bengali.”
Yet, there
Phirta a falak barson
Tub khaak ke parde se
Insaan nikalte hain.
(Don’t take me easy;
For years this cosmos turns on its axis;
Only then does a human being appear
From behind the curtain spread across this earthly creation)
In the classic couplet by Mir Taqi Mir I would replace “human being” with “Ravi Shankar” for my immediate purposes. In fact, Mir is to Urdu poetry what Pandit Ravi Shankar is to Hindustani music. This begs a question: if Ravi Shankar or Robu as his Guru and father-in-law, Ustad Alauddin Khan addressed him, was the “Mir” of our sangeet, who is Ghalib to sustain the metaphor? Anyone exposed to the universe of classical sangeet has been tormented by the bipolarity in the world of Sitar: who is greater, Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) or Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928-2004)? To continue the equation, Vilayat Khan would end up as Ghalib – beyond this, the metaphor would get mouldy.
Put it down to my perverse priorities, I found it difficult to ignore Ravi Shankar’s centenary earlier this week on April 7: it would have been a sacrilege – Coronavirus lockdown or no Coronavirus lockdown.
This is despite the fact that our earliest musical loyalties were with Vilayat Khan, something which I can trace to the first concert we attended at Sapru House, the only concert hall in New Delhi in the early 1960s. He played Tilak Kamod, its melodic lines, pure poetry, every stretch of the “meend” embraced all the notes of Tilak Kamod. The “drut” or fast passages measured up to poet Momin’s description: “Shola sa lapak jaaye hai, awaz to dekho.” (every passage leaps up, like a flame)
Aruna, my wife, was then learning the sitar and we were hooked on Vilayat Khan’s Desh, Behag, Bageshwari, Piloo, Kedara, Jaijaiwanti – all the ragas of thumri my ears were familiar with since childhood. As I grew in the world of music, limitations in the romance with Vilayat Khan surfaced. What was touted as “gayaki” ang or “vocal” style were actually the emotion
Lockdown Diary: Resolving the Ravi Shankar-Vilayat Khan dilemma
Put it down to my perverse priorities, I found it difficult to ignore Ravi Shankar’s centenary earlier this week (April 7): it would have been a sacrilege – Corona lockdown or no Corona lockdown.
This despite the fact that our earliest musical loyalties were with Vilayat Khan, a fact which I can trace to the first concert we attended at Sapru House, the only concert hall in New Delhi in the early 60s. He played Tilak Kamod, its melodic lines, pure poetry, every stretch of the “meend” embraced all the notes of Tilak Kamod. The “drut” or fast passages measured up to poet Momin’s description: “Shola sa lapakjaaye hai, awaz to dekho”. (every passage leaps up, like a flame)
Aruna, my wife was then learning the sitar and we were hooked on Vilayat Khan’s Desh, Behag, Bageshwari, Piloo, Kedara, Jaijaiwanti – all the ragas of thumri my ears were familiar with since childhood. As I grew in the world of music, limitations in the romance with Vilayat Khan surfaced. What was touted as “gayaki” ang or “vocal” style were actually theemotional, sentimental melodic lines of thumri, Dadra and Kajri.
They were the two greatest sitar players of the post-independence generation and lifelong adversaries. Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar were contemporaries who played together on stage only once, in 1952, when the former stole the show. Journalist and author Namita Devidayal explores this unique rivalry in The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan (Westland Publications), her brilliant new biography of the mercurial Hindustani classical musician, from which this piece is excerpted.
1952, Delhi. It had been five years since Independence and India was still in the mood for celebration. Two young string musicians were performing together at the Constitution Club grounds—a sitar player called Ravi Shankar and a sarod player whose name was Ali Akbar Khan. Both were in their early thirties and students of Baba Allauddin Khan, an ambidextrous musician with a goatee, famous for his genius and his temper.
The concert was part of the Jhankar Festival. There was tremendous anticipation around this particular performance and the music fraternity had been buzzing for days. Ravi Shankar had already astonished the world by creating an orchestra for the new All India Radio. Ali Akbar, who happened to be Baba’s son, was emerging as one of the most refined musicians of his generation. Accompanying them that evening were two tabla masters from Banaras, Kanthe Maharaj and his nephew Kishan.
A covered stage had been constructed on the grounds. The musicians walked up, one behind the other, all wearing white. While they were tuning their instruments, a young man in a black kurta and rimless glasses suddenly appeared in front of the stage, clutching his sitar. He addressed the audience in beautiful Urdu. ‘This stage has so many gorgeous flowers. I would like to add my fragrance by joining my friends Robu-da and Alu-da this evening.’
A murmur of surprise went around the audience. The performance was meant to be a duet. Who was this? Although he spoke po