Journey
Hindustani gharanas — vocal, instrumental and tabla
A gharana is a lineage, not a place: a way of singing or playing transmitted within a family or a line of disciples, named for wherever that family happened to settle. Most are named for courts that could pay, some for villages, one for a Bombay street. Twenty-two of them, from dhrupad to the tabla solo.
Stops (22)
- Bettiah dhrupad tradition · Bettiah — dhrupad kept by a court
A Bihar zamindari that maintained a dhrupad lineage from the seventeenth century, with Mishra family singers of the Betia bāni. Dhrupad survived the nineteenth century mainly in places like this — small courts with enough money and enough conservatism to keep paying for a form the cities had stopped wanting.
- Darbhanga gharana · 16th c. onwards
The Darbhanga gharana of dhrupad grew under Mithila's rajas from the eighteenth century, in a Bihar zamindari that maintained a dhrupad lineage of remarkable continuity. The Malliks of Darbhanga produced Ram Chatur, Radhakrishna, Siyaram Tiwari and Ram Chatur Mallik through five generations; the tradition is the most substantial dhrupad school east of the Ganges and one of only two dhrupad lineages that continued to have living performers into the twenty-first century.
- Gwalior gharana · c. 1500 onwards
Mān Singh Tomar's court at Gwalior around 1500 gave dhrupad its shape, and the Gwalior gharana of khayal in the nineteenth century — Nathan Peer Bakhsh's descendants Hassu, Haddu and Nathu Khan and their students — became the model for open, transparent, sthayi-antara-centred singing. The Gwalior gharana is the oldest continuous khayal lineage and the reference against which every later gharana defined its own approach to raga.
- Agra gharana · 17th c. onwards
The Agra gharana traces itself to Haji Sujan Khan and the dhrupad Nauhar bāni, and grew into the twentieth-century khayal school of Faiyaz Khan and his students. The tradition is muscular and rhythmic, drawing from dhrupad's alap and layakari, and its central register sits low in the male voice. Faiyaz Khan sang at every major princely court in the interwar period, and his Kalyan and Yaman recordings are still the standard reference.
- Sham Chaurasi gharana · Sham Chaurasi — the Punjab dhrupad line
A Punjabi lineage from a village near Hoshiarpur, singing dhrupad and later khayal, and the gharana of Salamat and Nazakat Ali Khan. Partition cut it in two: the senior musicians went to Pakistan, and the lineage is now sung on both sides of a border that runs through the middle of its own history.
- Kirana gharana · Kirana — the long note
Named for a village near Kurukshetra and shaped by Abdul Karim Khan in the early twentieth century, Kirana is the gharana of slow tempo and held notes, built on the accuracy of each svara rather than on speed. It produced Bhimsen Joshi and Gangubai Hangal, and is probably the most widely imitated vocal style in India today.
- Patiala gharana · Patiala — ornament and speed
Founded by Ali Baksh and Fateh Ali Khan at the Patiala court and carried into the twentieth century by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, whose voice defined the gharana's reputation for fast taans, dense ornament and a strong thumri repertoire. He moved to Pakistan after partition and returned to India in 1957.
- Rampur–Sahaswan gharana · Rampur–Sahaswan — the Nawab's singers
A lineage from the Rampur court, descended from Inayat Hussain Khan and connected to the Gwalior line by marriage, known for open-throated voice production and clear enunciation. Rampur took in Delhi's musicians after 1857 as it took in Delhi's books, so the nawabi state preserved two kinds of wreckage at once.
- Bhendi Bazaar gharana · Bhendi Bazaar — a Bombay gharana
The one gharana named for a city neighbourhood rather than a court or a village, founded by three brothers who came to Bombay from Moradabad in the 1890s. It is known for merukhand, an exhaustive permutational treatment of the notes of a rāga, and for breath control in long phrases. Lata Mangeshkar took lessons in it.
- Mewati gharana · Mewati — the gharana that grew late
A nineteenth-century lineage from the Mewat country that remained obscure until Pandit Jasraj made it nationally known in the second half of the twentieth century. Its practice is heavily bhakti-oriented, with the rāga treated as a vehicle for devotional text rather than the other way round.
- Indore gharana · Indore — one man's gharana
Founded by Amir Khan in the mid-twentieth century out of elements taken from Kirana, Bhendi Bazaar and the Merukhand method — an exceptionally slow vilambit, a meditative approach and very little display. It is the youngest recognised gharana and the clearest case of a style created deliberately by a single musician rather than inherited.
- Maihar gharana · Maihar — Allauddin Khan's school
The Śāradā temple hill is also where Allauddin Khan taught at the Maihar court from 1918, producing Ali Akbar Khan, Annapurna Devi, Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee. More of twentieth-century Indian instrumental music comes out of this one small state than out of any other place, and the teaching was famously severe.
- Etawah–Imdadkhani gharana · Etawah — the sitar of the Imdadkhani line
The sitar gharana of Imdad Khan and his descendants — Enayat Khan, Vilayat Khan, Shujaat Khan — which developed the gāyakī ang, a way of playing that imitates the human voice, with meend drawn across several frets. It is the dominant sitar style of the twentieth century alongside Maihar's.
- Shahjahanpur sarod gharana · Shahjahanpur — the sarod
The older of the two sarod lineages, descended from Afghan rabāb players who settled in Rohilkhand, and the tradition of Amjad Ali Khan's family at Gwalior. The instrument itself is a rabāb reworked in India with a metal fingerboard and no frets, which is why its glissando is unlike anything else on a plucked string.
- Benares gharana · Benares — the instrumental and tabla city
Banaras holds a tabla gharana, a sitar and shehnai tradition, a Kathak lineage and a distinct thumri style, which is more forms in one city than anywhere else in India. Bismillah Khan played the shehnai at the Vishwanath temple for decades, and the tabla bāj here is open-handed and loud, made for outdoor and temple performance.
- Delhi (Dāgar) gharana · Delhi — the first tabla gharana
The oldest of the tabla lineages, traced to Siddhar Khan in the eighteenth century, and the source from which all the others are said to branch. Its bāj uses mainly two fingers and a closed, intimate sound made for accompanying khayal in a room rather than filling a courtyard.
- Ajrada tabla gharana · Ajrada — the tabla of the doubled rhythm
A village near Meerut and a tabla lineage founded by two Delhi disciples, known for complex cross-rhythms and a heavy bass sound. Ajrada players work in a rhythmic density that other gharanas approach only at high speed, and the style is closely associated with the teenth-tāl cycle.
- Farrukhabad tabla gharana · Farrukhabad — the tabla solo as composition
Founded by Haji Vilayat Ali Khan in the nineteenth century out of the Lucknow line, and known for elaborate composed gats and a repertoire designed to be performed solo rather than as accompaniment. It is the gharana that did most to make the tabla a concert instrument in its own right.
- Lucknow tabla gharana · Lucknow — the tabla for dance
The Nawabi court's tabla tradition, developed alongside Lucknow Kathak and shaped by the requirements of accompanying dancers: open sounds, clear articulation of bols and a repertoire built to be spoken as well as played. Music and dance in Lucknow were taught in the same households.
- Punjab tabla gharana · Punjab — the pakhawaj in tabla hands
A tabla tradition that took its repertoire and its power from the pakhawaj, the older barrel drum of dhrupad, and plays with a force other gharanas do not attempt. Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain come from this line, which is why it is the most widely heard Indian percussion style in the world.
- Bishnupur gharana · 17th c. onwards
The one classical gharana of Bengal, sustained by the Malla rajas of Bishnupur from the seventeenth century in a Vaishnava terracotta-temple town more famous for its architecture. The Bishnupur gharana is a dhrupad lineage that developed its own bandishes in Sanskrit and Brajabuli; its most famous modern representative Radhika Mohan Maitra took the style out of Bishnupur in the twentieth century and it survives in a handful of Bengali households.
- Jaipur-Atrauli gharana · 18th c. onwards
The Jaipur–Atrauli gharana is one of the great khayal lineages, founded by Alladiya Khan in the late nineteenth century out of the older Atrauli-Bhendibazaar tradition. Its complex, note-dense taans, use of unusual ragas like Basanti-Kedar and Nat-Kedar, and long alap-vistars are the tradition's signature; Kesarbai Kerkar and Mogubai Kurdikar carried it into recording, and Kishori Amonkar shaped its modern reception.