Vilayat Khan

Ustad Vilayat Khan (28 August 1928 – 13 March 2004) was an Indian classical sitar player, considered by many to be the greatest sitarist of his age.

Along with Imdad Khan, Enayat Khan, and Imrat Khan, he is credited with the creation and development of gayaki ang (a technique that emulates the vocal melisma of Hindustani classical music) on the sitar.

His performance at the concert organized by Vikramaditya Sangeet Parishad, Mumbai in 1944 drew the headline "Electrifying Sitar".

In the 1950s, Vilayat Khan worked closely with instrument makers, especially the famous sitar-makers Kanailal & Hiren Roy, to further develop the instrument.

Also, he liked to perform without a tanpura Drone, filling out the silence with strokes to his chikari strings.

Some ragas he would somewhat re-interpret (Bhankar, Jaijaivanti), others he invented himself (Enayatkhani Kanada, Sanjh Saravali, Kalavanti, Mand Bhairav), but he was first and foremost a traditional interpreter of grand, basic ragas such as Yaman, Shree, Todi, Darbari and Bhairavi.

He was known for improvisation with his knack for finding the different patterns in the ragas he played.

Vilayat Khan was both a traditional sitar player and a maverick innovator in his music.

He was given a lot of credit for developing a sitar style called 'gayaki ang', where his sitar attempted to mimic the sound of the human voice and seemed to give the audience a sense that the sitar was singing.

He invented a technique of bending a note after the sitar string was plucked, creating a sound after-effect from it.

This technique later influenced other sitar players.

He had been touring outside India off and on for more than 50 years, and was probably the first Indian musician to play in England in 1951 after independence.

He has composed the music for several films, including Jalsaghar (1958), The Guru (1969), and Kadambari (1976).

He had given a chance to newcomer Kavita Krishnamurthy in Kadambari which was the first song in her career.

Vilayat was born in Gouripur, Mymensingh in then East Bengal in British India and current Bangladesh.

His father Enayat Khan was recognised as a leading sitar and surbahar (bass sitar) player of his time, as had been his grandfather, Imdad Khan, before him.

He was taught in the family style, known as the Imdadkhani gharana by his father and other relatives in the family.

Imdadkhani gharana is also called Etawah gharana known after a small city close to Agra where Imdad Khan lived.

This family represents the sixth generation of musicians that dates back to the Mughal Empire.

However, Enayat Khan died when Vilayat was only ten, so much of his education came from the rest of his family: his uncle, sitar and surbahar maestro Wahid Khan, his maternal grandfather, singer Bande Hassan Khan, and his mother, Bashiran Begum, who had studied the practice procedure of his forefathers.

His uncle, Zinde Hassan, looked after his riyaz (practice).

As a boy, Vilayat wanted to be a singer; but his mother, herself from a family of vocalists, felt he had a strong responsibility to bear the family torch as a sitar maestro.

Vilayat Khan performed at All Bengal Music Conference, as his first concert, organized by Bhupen Ghosh in Kolkata with Ahmed Jan Thirakwa on tabla.

Vilayat composed and conducted the score for three feature films – Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar (1958) in Bengali, Merchant-Ivory Productions' The Guru (1969) in English, and Madhusudan Kumar's Kadambari (1976) in Hindi.

He also composed the music for a little-known documentary film in Bengali produced by Barin Roy, entitled Jalsaghar; he won a silver medal for composing this film at the 1st Moscow International Film Festival in 1959.

The Imdad Khan family is of Rajput lineage.

In an informal continuation of his Rajput lineage, Vilayat Khan's father Enayat Khan kept a Hindu name of Nath Singh.

Vilayat Khan himself composed many bandishes using the pen name, Nath Piya.

With his first wife, Monisha Hazra, he had three children—Yaman Khan, Sufi singer Zila Khan, and sitarist Shujaat Khan (b. 1960).

By his second marriage, Vilayat Khan had one son, Hidayat (b. 1975), also a professional sitarist.

Vilayat Khan was survived also by his younger brother, Imrat Khan.

The brothers played duets in their youth but had a severe falling-out and for years were not on speaking terms.

Vilayat's nephews Rais Khan, Nishat Khan, and Irshad Khan are also sitar players.

In the 1990s, his recording career reached a climax of sorts with a series of ambitious CDs for India Archive Music in New York, some traditional, some controversial, some eccentric.

During his long career, he toured and performed in South Asia, China, Africa, Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In an interview given to Karan Thapar for BBC in early 2002, Vilayat Khan admitted to having the Rajput name – Kahan Singh.

Khan spent much of his life in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

He was married twice.

He recorded his first 78-RPM disc at the age of and gave his last concert in 2004 at the age of 75.

When he died from lung cancer in 2004, Vilayat Khan had been recording for over 65 years and broadcasting on All India Radio almost as long.