Audience must get peace, pleasure, happiness through our performance'

Khaan Saheb of our times, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan:

The word ‘Ustad’ has power to evoke different ‘feelings’ in a music lover. Different in the sense – for example – a feeling of ‘respect’ starts arising while the word ’Ustad’ is being uttered, and that of ‘awe’, ‘fear out of respect’  may also come along, while getting ‘tongue-tied’ is almost evident, getting overwhelmed is also a big possibility. To overcome all this and to talk to an Ustad that too for an interview, probably, gives birth to a new kind of feeling that one might not be aware of. So the interviewer would make a request to you, the reader, to read this like it is you who has done it. Ustad Amjad Ali Khan is as grand a personality as is his music. He is a true ambassador of our country and belongs to that extinct humanity, in which a person, on top, is content also.

With his father’s big portrait behind him, the Ustad is sitting on a chair, in this room where carrying boxes of sarod are resting along the walls and portraits of his forefathers are looking at him. He is wearing a beautiful embroidered shawl. As I touch his feet, taking his ‘aashirwad’ and start sitting on the wooden floor, tea arrives. Taking his cup, he tells me, “Once you are through with your photo-shoot, I’ll join you (to sit on the floor)”. “Khan saab, I am not going to take your photos today; am here to talk with you,” I say, smiling and thinking… I can’t do both simultaneously.

Here are some of the questions that Bharat S. Tiwari could ask, that he answered like a maestro, words in synch with his thoughts:

Your music and you are popular with all kinds of people.What makes it possible for you to have a reach across the boundaries of social class, so gracefully?
Every musician has a different mission, every musician has a different approach and I always feel that grammar is very important for every musician; literature too, is very important for every musician. But very few musicians reach the level of poetry. There’s poetry too in music. There’s colour in music. There’s fragrance in music.

I always pray to the almighty that I must never be a reason for any disgrace, any humiliation to music. At this stage I have higher respect for those who come to listen to me for the first time. You may call them uninitiated audience, they have heard my name, have heard it a lot, and wonder what Amjad Ali Khan is all about. They are there in my concert to see what Amjad Ali Khan plays and how well he does it… I have great respect and affection for this audience. So I will present my music in such a manner that this (uninitiated) audience becomes my permanent audience; they should come to listen to me again.

Then there are those who have heard me for very long; who know how much music I have; who know for how long I can play a certain raag. This all has been long done!

In religion and in Indian Classical Music, we are blindly, almost 99%, following convention, but convention is a very unhealthy word. Convention ka matlab ‘lakeer ka faqeer’, i.e. whatever has happened just keep doing that. I didn’t follow it. Tradition allows innovation. And thanks to the almighty, people across the world are accepting, what I present to them, with love.

Can I say that you are, because you developed poetry into your music and you are a lot into innovation?
I am giving more importance to composition. Indian classical music has seen a lot of improvisation in the past, but unfortunately innovation got ignored: ‘Mukhda pakda aur dukhda shuru ho gaye’… (allow me to translate it into English: ‘held the verse weld the curse’). So they didn’t even play the complete composition. Didn’t play the antara (stanza)

And this is happening even today!?
Yes. It is happening and it will continue to.

They will somehow start a raag, but God only knows when they will finish it. (laughs) This is a tragedy of our music and I realised it very early. Hence, more importance to composition. For this festival Diksha, happening at IGNCA, my disciples will be playing and celebrating my compositions. They have been given 30 minutes with an instruction that you are not to play beyond it.

It is time that an organiser may ask, depending on the stature of the artist, to play 5 raags in an hour…because if they leave it on the artist, he might end up playing one raag in five hours. ‘Held the verse weld the curse’.

Riyaaz is the oxygen that keeps the music in a musician refreshed. With whom did you do riyaaz?

Riyaaz is done alone.

Riyaaz is a sadhna (meditation), which is a relation between the man and the almighty. That is why, in our country, we say ‘Swar hi Ishwar hai’ (Music is God). The great Carnatic musician Thyagaraja in one of his compositions is asking Lord Ram: God, is it possible, that in one lifetime I could understand the meaning of one sur (note) ‘Sa’. I am the first north Indian musician to play on the shrine of Tyagaraja, and I played his composition. For riyaaz, I learned Carnatic music before performing.

You wrote in My Father, Our Fraternity that your son Ayaan pushed you to write. When you were born, your father ‘Aftaab-E-Sarod’ Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan was 65. What was your mother Begum Rahat Jahan Khan’s role in the content of the book, in your life?

A mother is the first teacher of a child. My mother was my first Guru. Mother of Amaan and Ayaan (his sons) is their first Guru. My mother was a very simple woman, as it was then, and if she was happy with my Riyaaz, she might put a paan in my mouth.   

The book that my sons wrote on their Guru, that is me, inspired me to write a book on my Guru, that is my father. Music has its politics and my father was a victim of it and because of which, there was no book on him. That made me write my first book. After that Penguin Random House asked me to write Master on masters, a book on 12 musicians. Master on masters is such a unique book that now even I wonder how I could write it, because if you see history, musicians have not gone beyond their gurus while writing a book. But then I realise that I could write it because ‘I miss them all’. Because it was them listening to whom I grew up. It was with those great musicians that I’d play in a festival, that I’d listen to. And suddenly they left us, leaving a vacuum behind. Now when I am in a festival — I miss them. It was such a fond time, like the day I am performing, I play for 6 hours and the next day when Ravishankarji is performing, he played for 7 hours. Like if my father played for certain hours next day, Vilayat Khan Saab played beyond that. These 12 are there in the book, because I had a personal relationship with them. They’d come to my place and I’d go to theirs. It is my tribute to them. Today when people question that classical music is going down, I’ll say no. It is not going down, rather, because of whom classical music became ‘popular’ are now gone. The trendsetters.    

You invented many raags: ‘Kiran Ranjani’, ‘Haripriya Kanada’, ‘Shivanjali’, ‘Shyam Shri’, ‘Suhag Bhairav’ to name a few. How do they evolve?
I feel embarrassed to say that I made raags. A melody comes to me — which is like a soul — that has an entity. While humming a melody, wondering, what is it? The melody will ask me, “Will you embrace me or should I leave…”.  I will embrace that melody giving it a name… that could be ‘Kiran Ranjani’ or raag ‘Subhalakshmi’ or  raag ‘Haafiz Kauns’. I made a raag for Mahatma Gandhi and named it ‘Bapu Kauns’. It’s a natural growth of a musician.

Are there hours during the birth of raags that (a) give divine feelings of ‘father’; (b) give you feelings of being one with Him?

The message for sure comes from the above.

Message comes from a cosmic power, giving a new melody. There was once a raag that I’d keep humming.

[sings] (Let me try to describe how I felt while Ustad was humming — I, for sure, could feel the presence of the cosmic power that he had just referred to, all around me, in that smaller universe, his room. The presence was so real that it is there even in the recording of the conversation. For a moment I forgot that he is a Sarod player, for his voice was so beautiful and so full of the ‘soul’ that I wished he kept on singing. And I am not exaggerating. Maybe, someday, I’ll  put it up somewhere, upload it, so that every music lover can feel it.)…so this I used to hum. Suddenly realising, what it is that I am singing? A new melody has come from the almighty. I had to go to Pune, to perform at the ‘Ganesh Festival’ and I named it ‘Ganesh Kalyan’. Today I play raag kalyan of Lord Ganesha’s name, all across the world.

Could you say something about the process — when do you work or do Riyaaz? Do you keep a strict schedule?
In younger days, yes, there was a strict schedule, waking up at 4 o’ clock and doing Riyaaz. But at this stage, whenever I feel like it. Mentally, my Riyaaz is on, round the clock.  

Can you dismiss from your mind, whatever raag you are on, when you are away from sarod?
When I am visiting a spa, the first thing that I have to ask them to do is to stop the music that is playing. Because if the music is on my brain will keep converting the notes as per his training and this won’t allow me to rest, the very reason that I am there for. My mind is like a blotting paper, I’ll keep doing notation of whatever sound is coming to me. If this sound is coming to me [sings] da da da da … Pa Ma Ga Ma Ga Ni Sa Re. This will come to my mind…mera to homework chalu ho gaya… So I have to turn the music off: this is my relaxation. Total silence. The world listens to music to work, to cook, to paint, to write, to study, to bathe, but for me ‘relaxation’ is when there is ‘total silence’ no-sound.

You are doing a three-day festival of music, Diksha, celebrating Guru-Shishya Parampara, is there something that pushed you to do it, to highlight, to preserve the Parampara?
There’s no Guru-Shishya tradition left now. It is nearly at its end. I have given the same training to my disciples as well as my sons. My disciples too are my children, because Amaan and Ayaan are home, they have some extra advantage. It is a duty of every parent to promote their children, whereas, it is not a duty of a Guru to promote his shishya. A Guru can teach his shishya. All my disciples are playing the same things that I have taught; I haven’t taught Amaan and Ayaan any special raag. Music is my wealth and I am sharing it with all my disciples, including my sons. By Diksha at IGNCA, I am trying to give my disciples a stage, wherein, I will also be performing.

How do you keep yourself connected with your disciples?
My teaching, since I started it, has always been free. Never making any demand. If they feel like giving something, I’ll tell them not to do it. Don’t even bring flowers; they have become pretty costly. Learn and practise, that is all that I want. It’s a spiritual relationship, they are part of Bangash family, torchbearers of the gharana.

How are your girl students? Who was the first of them?
My first girl students, even though I was younger to them, were students of my father. I’d teach them. I was their guru. The class monitor. There was Urmi Jain, whom I’d teach, she was a professor of Sanskrit at Miranda House. Two girl students Smita Nagdev and Saroj Ghosh are performing at Diksha, IGNCA.

You and Sarod, as I said earlier, are loved by, even those who might not have an interest in classical music and that has helped music a lot. What will be your advice to artists, so that, they and their art grow?

It’s a fact that we all love and respect a man of few words, preciseness, conciseness: ‘sense of proportion’. Every artist, speaker, must have a sense of proportion. It was a tragedy of classical music that Jagjit Singh arrived in the market. It was a tragedy of classical music that Pankaj Udhas arrived in the market. It was a tragedy of classical music that Anoop Jalota arrived in the market. What I am trying to say is that our (classical musicians) one raag is yet to finish, while in one-hour Jagjit Singhji might sing five ghazals, Pankaj Udhas ten ghazals and Anoop Jalota may sing ten bhajans. So there’s variety and audience gets diverted, because here (in classical music) one raag is yet on.

We need to understand, whether we, the classical musicians are here, in this world, to give the listener pleasure or pain. We have to take care of this and we have to make sure, God forbid, that it shouldn’t happen, while one is performing, the audience starts looking at their watch, or starts leaving the auditorium.

It is dharma of all performing artists to make sure that whoever is there as an audience, must get all the peace, pleasure and happiness through their performance.  
Sense of proportion is the key.

The writer is an interior designer with a passion for photography and Hindustani literature and culture