Tradition · instrumental gharana
Maihar gharana
Also known as Satna, Sharda Devi, Sharda Devi — Maihar, Sharda Devi, Satna
The instrumental gharana of the Maihar-Senia line, descended from Ustad Allauddin Khan at the court of Maihar in the early twentieth century. Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan came out of this school, and its sitar and sarod styles are among the most widely heard forms of Hindustani music outside India. Named for the small central-Indian town where Allauddin taught, and connected in tradition through Wazir Khan of Rampur to Tansen's own descendants.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Tradition
- Hindustani instrumental tradition; gharana histories
- Confidence
- Not assessed
A gharana is a lineage/tradition rather than a simple place-bound institution; the mapped point is an origin, court, or major associated centre and should not be read as an exclusive birthplace.
Connections (3)
- Teaching lineageAllauddin Khan
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.
- Teaching lineageShahjahanpur sarod gharana
The sarod is a rabāb reworked in India with a smooth metal fingerboard and no frets, which is why its glissando sounds unlike any other plucked string. The two lineages that play it descend from Afghan rabāb players who settled in Rohilkhand and Gwalior: the Shahjahanpur line, which is Amjad Ali Khan's family, and the Maihar line through Allauddin Khan and his son Ali Akbar Khan.
- Teaching lineageTansen
The Maihar-Senia gharana claims descent from Tansen through Wazir Khan of Rampur, who came to Maihar in the early twentieth century as Allauddin Khan's teacher. Every subsequent lineage — sitar through Ravi Shankar, sarod through Ali Akbar Khan — is treated in the tradition as an unbroken teaching line from Tansen. Whether the descent is literal is disputed; the transmission of style is not, and Maihar is where it was passed on.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, "Maihar gharana"; Sangeet Natak Akademi oral-history collections.
Open Maihar gharana in the repository →