Khan, Ali Akbar

Khan, Ali Akbar (älē' ăk'bär khän) [key], 1922–, Indian musician, b. Shivpur, East Bengal (now Bangladesh). A master of the sarod, a 25-stringed N Indian instrument, Khan was born into a family whose roots in traditional Indian court music extend back to the 16th cent. Trained by his father, Alauddin Khan, a famous musician and teacher, the younger Khan began performing at 13, was appointed court musician to the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and became a well-known virtuoso. The violinist Yehudi Menuhin heard Khan play in Delhi in 1955 and invited the young musician to the United States. There he performed classical Indian music in concert and on television and made his first recordings, helping to spur the genre's popularity in the West during the 1960s and thereafter. Khan has since produced nearly 100 albums and performed frequently, sometimes with his brother-in-law, sitarist Ravi Shankar. He has composed numerous ragas and written the scores for several films, e.g., Satyajit Ray's Devi (1960); Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1994). Khan also has founded colleges of classical Indian music in Kolkata (1956), San Rafael, Calif. (1967), and Basel, Switzerland (1985), and has established (1994) a music foundation.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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