My regret is I never got to see him perform live. Check out the You tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crYWuSk81O4
December 5, 2011
Sultan Khan, Indian Classical Musician, Dies at 71
By JON PARELES
New York Times
Sultan Khan, a renowned Indian classical musician who carried forward the tradition of a disappearing instrument, the bowed lute called a sarangi, and who performed with Western musicians like George Harrison and Ornette Coleman, died on Nov. 27 in Mumbai, India. He was 71.
The cause was kidney failure, said Zakir Hussain, the tabla player who frequently performed with him.
Mr. Khan, who lived in Jodhpur, was the heir to multiple generations of his family's style of improvising on the sarangi, translated as the instrument of "a hundred singing colors," which has three melody strings and 33 sympathetic strings. It is a difficult instrument; instead of choosing notes by pressing down the strings on the neck, as on a violin, the player presses upward with a fingernail. Few classical musicians of Mr. Khan's generation studied it. But Mr. Khan ensured that the sarangi was heard worldwide and spurred its revival.
Mr. Khan performed and recorded widely in the rigorous North Indian classical tradition, improvising on ragas with songful melodic lines and virtuoso flourishes. He was also a vocalist, and he often interspersed singing and playing.
"It is thought among musicians in India that his sarangi literally sang," Mr. Hussain said by telephone from Mumbai. "He was able to coax out of the instrument all the nuances of the vocal style of Indian music."
Along with classical performances, Mr. Khan was employed in many other spheres. He worked on Bollywood musical soundtracks and had a latter-day pop career in India as a singer. He performed or recorded with Western pop and rock musicians including Madonna and Duran Duran, jazz musicians like the saxophonist Dave Liebman, and with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani qawwali singer.
With Mr. Hussain, the bassist and producer Bill Laswell and two tabla players who are also dance-music producers, Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale, Mr. Khan formed the South Asian-tinged electronica group Tabla Beat Science in 1999. "Western influences have given a different dimension to my music," he once told an interviewer.
Mr. Khan was born in Jodhpur and first studied sarangi with his father, Ustad Gulab Khan, who had studied with his own father. He also took singing lessons with the classical vocalist Amir Khan (no relation) whose school of improvising, the indore gharana, strongly influenced all Mr. Khan's music. Mr. Khan was 11 when he made his solo debut, playing sarangi at the All-India Music Conference.
The sarangi traditionally accompanies singers, and Mr. Khan worked with many vocalists, both in classical performances and as a studio sideman for Bollywood films. He also emerged as a soloist. He performed around the world with Ravi Shankar's group as part of Harrison's 1974 tour, and he performed with Mr. Shankar on the soundtrack for the 1982 film "Gandhi."
As early as the mid-1970s, Mr. Khan worked with American jazz musicians, among them Mr. Liebman. At jazz festival performances in 1998 and 2000, Mr. Khan was a member of Global Expression, a fusion group led by Mr. Coleman.
A number of Bollywood composers studied sarangi with Mr. Khan and drew on his knowledge of Rajasthani folk music for their scores. While moviegoers had long heard Mr. Khan's sarangi playing, in 1999 they also heard his grainy baritone voice on the song "Albela Sajan Aayo Re" in the film "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" ("Straight From the Heart"). He was 60, and the song started a pop career. In 2000, an album he made with the female singer Chitra, "Piya Basanti," became a major hit in India; the title song won an international viewers' choice award at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
Mr. Khan received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award from India's national academy of music, dance and drama in 1992, and in 2010 the government of India gave him the Padma Bhushan, its third-highest civilian honor.
He is survived by his wife, Bano Khan; two daughters, Maimuna and Rukhsana; and a son, Sabir. His hereditary line of sarangi players continues: Sabir Khan and one of Mr. Khan's nephews, Dilshad Khan, are both noted sarangi players.
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