Ali Akbar Khan, 87; brought India's classical music to US
LOS ANGELES - Ali Akbar Khan, an acclaimed Indian musician and composer who helped introduce the classical music of north India to the West, died of kidney failure Thursday at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 87.
The website announcement by Ali Akbar College of Music, Mr. Khan’s teaching facility, said he had been a dialysis patient since 2004 but had taught at the college until two weeks ago.
Mr. Khan in 1991 was the first Indian musician to receive a MacArthur Foundation grant. He was also awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship, the highest US honor in traditional arts, in 1997.
A legendary player and teacher of the sarod, a stringed instrument as popular as the sitar, Mr. Khan recorded more than 95 albums.
He was nominated for five Grammy Awards and composed scores for both Indian and Western movies, including the 1963 Merchant-Ivory film “The Householder’’ and the 1993 Bernardo Bertolucci film “Little Buddha.’’
But to many his influence was in expanding the appeal of Indian music.
“He was instrumental in transforming Indian music into an international tradition in a way that was unprecedented,’’ said David Trasoff of Los Angeles, a senior student of Mr. Khan’s who has studied north Indian classical music and sarod performance for the last 36 years.
“What he attempted to do and - I believe succeeded in doing - was to transplant this very deep musical tradition by committing himself to a level of teaching that resulted in a number of proteges who have gone on to present this music throughout the world.’’
Mr. Khan was born in Shivpur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh).
He began playing the sarod, a 25-stringed instrument, and other instruments as a boy.
His father was Ustad Allauddin Khan, widely considered the greatest figure in north Indian music in the 20th century. Under his father’s tutelage, Mr. Khan’s training was rigid and vigorous with sessions often lasting 18 hours a day.
He studied with his father for decades.
“I started to learn this music at the same time I began to talk,’’ Mr. Khan told the Los Angeles Times some years ago, “so it is as natural to me as speaking. It’s not something I have to think about any more than I have to think about the words I’m saying.’’
He made his first public performance at 14 in Allahabad, and in his early 20s made his first recordings and became a court musician for the Maharajah of Jodhpur, a post he held for seven years until the Maharajah’s death.
In the early 1950s, violinist Yehudi Menuhin visited India and became aware of the power of Indian music.
Menuhin invited sitarist Ravi Shankar to the United States in 1955 to present a concert at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
But Shankar declined and a reluctant Mr. Khan, whom Menuhin called “the greatest musician in the world,’’ took his place.
“I didn’t want to come at all,’’ Mr. Khan told the Times. “I wanted to open a college in Calcutta . . . and when I came here, people didn’t have any idea that India had some kind of classical music. . . . But I played and I liked the audiences, and I think they liked me.’’
The concert introduced Indian music to the West. While in New York, Mr. Khan also made his first US recording of Indian classical music on Angel Records and gave the first performance of Indian music on Alistair Cooke’s program “Omnibus,’’ which then aired on CBS-TV.
Upon returning to India, he opened his college in Calcutta. It closed in the 1960s.
In 1965 and 1966, Mr. Khan was invited back to the United States to teach under the auspices of the American Society for Eastern Arts in Berkeley, Calif.
From that foundation, he was encouraged to start the Ali Akbar College of Music, initially in Berkeley and then in Marin County. Over the years, he has trained an estimated 10,000 Americans on the sarod and the tradition of northern Indian music. In 1985, he opened an extension of his music college in Basel, Switzerland.
“I teach what I learned from my father,’’ Mr. Khan told the Times. “The same system, with the same traditional purity. The same kind of devotion, the same love for music has to be built up. And that can only happen when it comes from the heart. Otherwise, music doesn’t last. It doesn’t stay.’’ 