During his lifetime, Sufi Abdul Wahid Khan Chisti Sabri was the acknowledged master of the Kirana style. His revival of Khayal at the turn of the 19th century stands, in itself, as a virtually unparalleled contribution to the recent history of Indian Classical music. Abdul Wahid Khan began his studies at an early age with his father, Abdul Majid Khan, learning vocal and sarangi. Around age 12 he w
as sent to Kolhapur to study with Haider Baksh Khan, who was a disciple of the reknowned master of the beenkar (vina) and voice, Mian Bande Ali Khan. "The King of Music"
Although a youthful prodigy of the Kolhapur court, remaining unchallenged after his public debut there at age 18, Abdul Wahid Khan had no inclination to spend time singing in the courts. Instead he lived a devout, reclusive life, singing in the presence of holy men and at the tombs of Sufi saints and only occasionally sang in public. The most striking fact on his performance was apparently his alap. The time he took, the care, to elaborate the raga was exceptional among khayal singers: he might take hours on one raga. When Salamat Ali Khan was asked by one of his disciples for a description of Abdul Wahid Khan, he replied, "He would begin to improvise in Lahore and you could travel to Delhi and back, and he would still be improvising. More than that you don't ask." Ustad Ali Akbar Khan said that when most musicians came to the radio station, they sang their raga and went home. When Abdul Wahid Khan would come, however, he would sing his scheduled broadcast and then just continue for 20 hours or so. People would come and go, and he would still be singing. His command of the art was such that no other musician ever performed in his presence. Abdul Wahid Khan practiced Todi and Darbari day in and day out. When asked why he limited himself to only two ragas, his response was that he would have dropped the second one also if morning time could last forever. One lifetime, according to him, was not enough to do justice to any raga. He was forced to change from Todi to something else only because of the setting sun and the g*thering darkness. Born in Kirana, he later moved to Lahore where he made an independent career until his death in Saharanpur in 1949. Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan was inferred the title of "Sirtaaj-e-Mousiki" the Crown of All Musicians, The King of Music. He had a most religious and pious attitude to life, paying homage throughout his life to his pir the Sufi, Khwaja Ali Ahmed Nafi Alam, a saint living in Multan in the Punjab, now Pakistan. Requiring rigorous discipline and fierce devotion, Abdul Wahid Khan accepted very few disciples, among them Pandit Pran Nath who became one of the most important disciples through his ceaseless practice, natural talent and extraordinary ability to serve his master. For almost 20 years he served his Guru and in 1970 came to the USA where he has many disciples in New York, California and Oregon including the American composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley. Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan had only one surviving son, who followed in his father's footsteps to also become a great musician on the sarangi and voice. Ustad Hafizullah Khan was a senior artist with the highest ratings at All India Radio in Delhi for over 35 years. Miyan Bande Ali Khan,
-Guru of Ustad Haider Baksh Khan
One of the most outstanding instrumentalists was the famous Ustad Bande Ali Khan. Bande Ali has been called the greatest binkar (veena) player of modern times. Born in c.1826 in Kirana, he first lived in Gwalior, then Indore and died in Pune in 1890. His father, Sadiq Ali Khan, was a binkar player and his maternal uncle, Bairen Ben, was a prominent drupad singer of Alwar and Jaipur. There is some contraversy over Bande's training. Some say he was a disciple of Nirmal Shah of Benares others say he learned from Umroa Khan. Bande was a practicing Sufi and stories tell of unusual powers that he possessed. Although primarily known as a binkar, he is associated with khayal and sarangi as well and is considered the founder of the Kirana gharana. Bande Ali added elements of khayal to his bin playing without compromising the bin idiom. He was a powerful force in his time and seemed to also be an innovative musician. He had a large following and many students and disciples. Bin player, Rajab Ali Khan, a court musician of Dewas in Jaipur, was trained by Bande Ali as was the great sarangi nawaz, Haider Baksh of Chrapoli. Gwalior had become a leading center for vocal khayal during the rule of Jayaji Rao Sindhia (1843-1886). The eminent singers Haddhu and Hassu Khan were the pride of his court. Bin player Bande Ali also spent some time in Gwalior. It is said that after an impressive recital at the royal court of Gwalior, Jayaji Rao spontaneously offered the Bin player anything he wished as a reward. Without hesitation, Bande Ali asked the king to present him with Chunnabai, one of the monarch's favorite songstresses. She became a dedicated disciple and the faithful partner of the great maestro, who was the most outstanding musician of the Indore court of Maharaja Tukoji Rao Holkar II (ruled 1843-1886). disciple of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan
Born to a cultured family in Lahore, Pran Nath grew up in an atmosphere of live performances of the masters of traditional vocal music. Illustrious musicians were invited by his grandfather to perform at their family home every evening. He was singing by the age of six and before long decided, against his mother's wishes, to devote his life to music. He left home at age thirteen and studied for twenty years as a disciple of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, the foremost master of the Kirana gharana, which descends from Gopal Nayak (ca. 1300), and is also known as the style of Krishna. Pran Nath's performances on All India Radio since 1937 and at Music Conferences throughout India established his reputation as a leading interpreter of Kirana style with an exceptional knowledge of traditional compositions and the delineation of raga. "Raga is in between the notes"
His uncompromising adherence to the authentic rendering of the traditional ragas and his unwillingness to change his style to meet modern tastes for rhythmic and popular elements contributed to his reputation as a "musician's musician" credited with a voluminous knowledge of hundreds of ragas and several times as many compositions. Many well-known professional singers, including Nazakat and Salamat Ali Khan and Bhimsen Joshi, came to him to perfect their understanding of particular ragas. From 1960 through 1970, he taught the advanced classes in Hindustani vocal music at Delhi University. Pandit Pran Nath's first appearance in the West in 1970 essentially introduced the vocal tradition of Hindustani classical music to the U.S. He performed throughout America, as well as in Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Iran and France, becoming the most influential exponent of the Kirana style. His 1971 morning performance at Town Hall, New York City was the first concert of Morning Ragas to be presented in the U.S. Subsequently, he introduced and elaborated to Western audiences the concept of performing ragas at the proper time of day by scheduling entire series of concerts at special hours. Many students and professional musicians came to him in America to learn about the vast system of raga and to improve their musicianship. Pran Nath's majestic expositions of the slow alap sections of ragas combined with his emphasis on perfect intonation and the clear evocation of mood had a profound impact on Western contemporary composers and performers. Minimalist music founders La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and the calligraphic light artist Marian Zazeela became his first American disciples. Fourth-world trumpeter Jon Hassell, jazz all stars Don Cherry and Lee Konitz, composers Jon Gibson, Yoshimasa Wada, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison and Allaudin Mathieu, mathematician Christer Hennix, concept artist Henry Flynt, dancer Simone Forti, and many others took the opportunity to study with the master. In 1972, he established his school in New York City, the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music; in 1973, he was Artist in Residence at the University of California at San Diego and from 1973 1984, was Visiting Professor of Music at Mills College, Oakland, California. Pran Nath contributed many innovations to the design of the tambura. His special unvarnished "Pandit Pran Nath style" tamburas have achieved worldwide recognition. He also designed a continuous drone instrument based on the tuning fork, the Prana Nada. He received numerous awards, including CAPS, Guggenheim and NEA grants to continue his work in composition in the Kirana style of Indian classical music. From 1975 through 1985, the Dia Art Foundation, in cooperation with the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music, presented frequent concerts of Pandit Pran Nath's work. From 1977 through 1985, Pran Nath held a commission from Dia Art Foundation to establish a performing, teaching and archival facility for the presentation and preservation of the Kirana tradition. He held commissions from the Pellizzi Foundation, Dia Art Foundation and MELA Foundation to perform and record an archive of the Kirana style of Indian classical music, including the six major ragas. In 1987, under a commission from MELA Foundation, with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, Pandit Pran Nath composed "Darbar daoun" set in the classical Raga Darbari. In 1989, he received a commission from the Kronos Quartet to create a new work for voice and string quartet. This work, Aba Kee Tayk Hamaree, was recorded by Kronos with Pandit Pran Nath, voice, and released in 1993 on their Elektra Nonesuch album, Short Stories (79310-2, 4). In Between the Notes, a video documentary on his life and work, produced by the California College of the Performing Arts, was telecast on WNET and other public TV stations. A VHS edition of the video documentary is available from MELA Foundation. His renditions of Ragas Todi and Darbari were featured on the Gramavision/Great Northern Arts recording, Ragas of Morning and Night, a 1986 New York Times Top Ten Critics Choice. After becoming a permanent resident of the U.S. in 1972, Pandit Pran Nath returned to India almost every year with groups of American and European disciples and students who wanted to study his music in the land of its origin. From 1992 through 1996, he led master classes in India for several weeks annually. He performed and taught in Bremen, Germany in 1995, and in Paris, France in 1996. He inaugurated the MELA Foundation New York Dream House in November 1993 with three Raga Cycle concerts. On May 12 and 17, 1996, his two Raga Cycle concerts of Afternoon and Evening Ragas in the Dream House were his last public performances. He returned to Berkeley, California, and for the next 27 days he continued to teach several students daily, in the last days, even from his hospital bed, with a final telephone lesson in Raga Darbari just a few hours before he died of congestive heart failure and complications of Parkinson's disease at 6:26 PM, June 13, 1996. His work is continued by The Pandit Pran Nath Musical Composition Trust under the directorship of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. disciple of Ustad Abdul Habib Khan & son of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan
Ustad Hafizullah Khan was the only child of the renowned vocalist and sarangi player, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan Chisti-Sabri and was born in Kirana India, on June 4th, 1946. Actually, Hafizullah Khansahib was the 17th and only surviving child of Abdul Wahid Khansahib and his second wife, as all the other children died at birth or soon after. Hafizullah Khansahib's mother, Naseera Begum or Moodan, recently passed away in Delhi in February 2003. At Wahid Khan's death in 1949, Hafizullah Khansahib was sent to live and study with his uncle, Ustad Abdul Habib Khan. He received exceedingly rigorous training: during the day he was free to fly kites and play with other children, but at night he was required to do riaz (practice) from 10pm to 4am. Hafizullah Khansahib joined his Guru and uncle, Habib Khan, to every concert he performed. Hafizullah Khansahib was trained both in voice and sarangi, but since there were many vocalists, Habib Khan decided Hafizullah Khan should become a sarangi player to be assured of getting work. "Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana"
Ustad Hafizullah Khan received the title of Khalifa (hereditary head) of the Kirana Gharana (Kirana school of North Indian classical music) in 1964. For thirty five years, Ustad Hafizullah Khan was a staff artist at All India Radio, Delhi, as a senior artist with the highest rating. He received the Swami Haridas Sangeet Samelan Sur Mani Award in 1972, and has played in most of the major music festivals in India. In 1975, 1989 and 1990, Hafizullah Khansahib performed on the sarangi on tour in Europe. Khansahib has students, both sarangi and vocal, from all over the world, including his American disciple, Rose Okada. Last year on Ustad Hafizullah Khan's third and final trip to the USA, he premiered in New York City at the Dream House of Khansahib with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela on June 13, 2002 in a concert honoring the great Kirana Vocalist, Pandit Pran Nath, who was the foremost disciple of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. Pandit Pran Nath was sent by his teacher as a last request to perform and teach the beautiful music of the Kirana School in America. Hafizullah Khansahib's playing followed the Kirana manner of badhat, the methodical note-by-note unfolding of the raga alap in the vilambit (slow) tempo, in been (plucked, fretted string instrument, predecessor of the sitar) style, as handed down by the great beenkar, Bande Ali Khan (1830-1890). This is characterized by an abundant use of meend, soot and kan (slides & grace notes) with emphasis on sur and raga (pitch & melody). Rhythmic devices, such as tihai, are infrequent and incidental. Khansahib did not play in the instrumental style of jor, jhala and g*t, but played khyal gayaki (vocal style) bandish (composition). In drut (fast) tempo, he favored sargam and tan (melodic patterns with & without separate bow articulation) that are offbeat, free of rhythmic constraint, intricate and imaginative in the use of varying melodic permutations, especially, bal pech ("twist tighten", e.g. His return to the bandish was not fixed and he freely varied the melody and starting beat of the mukhra (pick up phrase to the sum or first beat of the rhythm cycle). Khansahib's technical mastery included exquisite intonation, pure tone, wide dynamic range, graceful command of the bow and effortless speed over the complete range of three octaves. Khansahib's music is above all distinguished by the intense feeling of the raga, a profound repose and a brilliant creativity that is devoid of personality display.
- by Rik Masterson & Rose Okada
-disciple and son of Ustad Hafizullah Khan
Born in Kirana in 1982, Samiullah Khan began his initial training of classical Hindustani vocal music and sarangi at age four, under the guidance of his father Ustad Hafizullah Khan. At age six Samiullah had his first public performance on the All India Radio during the Yuva-vani or youth voice. In 1993 he won first prize in the classical vocal music competition at the Urdu Academy of India in Delhi. In 1996, Samiullah won two first prizes, one in voice and one in sarangi, at the All India Vishnu-Digambar Sangeet music competition in Agra. Samiullah has also performed several times, voice and sarangi at the yearly concerts of the Chisti School of Music, raga singing study program. He became the Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana in September 2003. In 2004 Samiullah had his first European tour. Samiullah is an artist of amazing technical ability, great vocal strength and maturity; he is a born performer. A shining light of a person, Samiullah's musical imagination, lightening speed tanas and beautiful voice are a great joy to hear and a promise of the continuation of raga singing at its highest level.
-disciple of Ustad Majid Khan, brother of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan & guru of Ustad
Hafizullah Khan
Ustad Abdul Habib Khan is the younger brother of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. Both brothers studied vocal music and sarangi from a young age with their father Ustad Majid Khan. Upon Abdul Wahid Khan's death, his son Hafizullah age 3, was brought up and musically trained by Abdul Habib Khan. Habib Khan was a AIR radio artist, born ~ 1877 in Kirana and died ~ 1963 in Kirana.
