Ustad Enayat Khan ( ur, عنایت خان ; 1894–1938) also known as Nath Singh was one of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
's most influential
sitar
The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...
and
surbahar players in the first decades of the 20th century. He was the father of
Vilayat Khan
Ustad Vilayat Khan (28 August 1928 – 13 March 2004) was an Indian classical sitar player.[North-Western Provinces
The North-Western Provinces was an administrative region in British India. The North-Western Provinces were established in 1836, through merging the administrative divisions of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces. In 1858, the nawab-ruled kingdom ...]
into a family of musicians. His father was the great sitar maestro
Imdad Khan
Ustad Imdad Khan (1848 – 1920) was a sitar and surbahar player. He was the first sitar player ever to be recorded.[Imdadkhani Gharana
The Etawah gharana is a North Indian school of sitar and surbahar music and named after a small town close to Agra where Imdad Khan (1848–1920) lived.][Etawah Gharana
The Etawah gharana is a North Indian school of sitar and surbahar music and named after a small town close to Agra where Imdad Khan (1848–1920) lived.][Agra
Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is ...]
called
Etawah
Etawah also known as Ishtikapuri is a city on the banks of Yamuna River in the state of Western Uttar Pradesh in India. It is the administrative headquarters of Etawah District. Etawah's population of 256,838 (as per 2011 population census) m ...
. He married Basiran Bibi, daughter of
khyal singer Bande Hussain.
[
]
Performing career
He settled with his family in Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, where, though he only lived to 43, he did much pioneering work on the sitar. For example, he standardised its physical dimensions and added the upper resonator gourd, which is very popular with today's players (though his own descendants have not been using it).
"True, Vilayat Khan did not play the rapid-fire multi-stroke 'taan-toda' in which his father (Enayat Khan) excelled; but it can be conjectured with a fair amount of certainty that this was because he did not want to enter an area already developed to the hilt by Ustad Enayat Khan."[
]
In a place rapidly developing into an important North Indian centre of the arts, at a time where interest in national culture was strong fuelled by the struggle for independence, he brought sitar music out from its narrow connoisseur circles to new mass audiences. Nobel
Nobel often refers to:
*Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1901, from the bequest of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
Nobel may also refer to:
Companies
*AkzoNobel, the result of the merger between Akzo and Nobel Industries in 1994
*Branobel, or ...
laureate Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
was a musical collaborator and personal friend. Some of Enayat Khan's recordings have been released on CD, on the ''Great Gharanas: Imdadkhani'' compilation in RPG/EMI
EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...
's ''Chairman's Choice'' series.[Profile of Enayat Khan on SwarGanga Music Foundation]
Retrieved 3 January 2019
Death
Enayat Khan died young, with four children. His two sons,