Person · instrumentalist & teacher
Allauddin Khan
Also known as Baba Allauddin Khan, Alauddin Khan, Ustad Allauddin Khan
Court musician at Maihar from 1918 and the teacher of Ali Akbar Khan, Annapurna Devi, Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee. More of twentieth-century Indian instrumental music descends from this one small central Indian state than from anywhere else, and he also built an orchestra there out of village children.
- Date
- c. 1862 – 1972
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Tradition
- Maihar gharana; recorded testimony of his students
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He is said to have run away from home in Bengal at about ten to learn music, to have practised with a rope tied from his hair to a ceiling hook so that sleep would wake him, and to have taught with a severity his students described for the rest of their lives.
Connections (2)
- Teaching lineageMaihar gharana
Allauddin Khan taught at the Maihar court from 1918, and the list of his students is most of the twentieth century's instrumental music: his son Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, his daughter Annapurna Devi on surbahar, Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee on sitar. He also formed the Maihar Band out of orphaned village children, using instruments he adapted himself, which ran for decades after he died and is still going.
- Court associationEtawah–Imdadkhani gharana
The Maihar and Etawah lines are the two schools that between them define modern sitar playing, and they play the instrument differently on purpose. Etawah developed the gāyakī ang, drawing meend across several frets so the sitar imitates a singing voice; Maihar under Allauddin Khan worked from instrumental and dhrupad structure instead. Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan are the two positions personified, and the argument between them lasted fifty years.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Allauddin Khan”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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