Imrat Khan

Ustad Imrat Khan ranks among the foremost masters of the surbahar, the resonant, sitar-inspired string instrument whose origins trace to his great-grandfather Ustad Sahabdad Khan and to Ustad Imdad Khan. Spanning four octaves, the instrument serves the rigorous dhrupad tradition of Indian classical music. After losing his father early in life, Imrat Khan studied both surbahar technique and the florid khyal vocal idiom under his mother Bashiran Begum and his maternal grandfather Ustad Bandeh Hassan. He and his elder brother Vilayat Khan formed one of the earliest sitar-and-surbahar partnerships, jointly shaping the gayaki ang (“vocal manner”) idiom within Indian instrumental performance. In 1956 the siblings joined the first Indian cultural delegation to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Although they later pursued independent paths, each brother remained central to the ongoing development of Indian classical music. From 1968 to 1970 Imrat taught at Dartington College of the Arts in England; the following year he became the first Indian classical musician to appear at London’s Royal Albert Hall. In 1988 the president of India presented him with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. Throughout the 1990s he gave numerous concerts and made recordings alongside his four sons—Nishat and Irshad on sitar, Wajahat on sarod, and Shafaatullah on tabla. He also composed for or contributed performances to Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (Le Salon de Musique) as well as the soundtracks of James Ivory’s The Guru and the Michael Caine/Sidney Poitier vehicle The Wilby Conspiracy.