Sultan Khan (musician)

Ustad Sultan Khan (15 April 1940 – 27 November 2011) was an Indian ''sarangi'' player and classical vocalist belonging to ''Sikar Gharana''. He was one of the founding members of the Indian fusion group Tabla Beat Science, with Zakir Hussain and Bill Laswell. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour, in 2010.

Early life

Sultan Khan was born on 15 April 1940 in Sikar District, Rajasthan, a princely state in the Indian Empire. He learned sarangi from his father Ustad Gulab Khan.

Career

Sultan Khan started his career at the All India Radio station, Rajkot in Gujarat as a 20-year-old boy in 1960. After having spent eight years in Rajkot very happily, he got a chance to play with Lata Mangeshkar during her visit to Rajkot. She asked him to play the sarangi while she sang. This proved a turning point for him and his career. Thereafter, he was transferred to the Mumbai radio station. Having joined the Mumbai radio, he was not only deeply involved with the Mumbai classical music circuit but also with film industry music.

He gave his first performance at the All-India Music Conference at the age of eleven, and has performed on an international scale with Ravi Shankar on George Harrison's 1974 Dark Horse World Tour.

He has had the good fortune of accompanying all the great music maestros like Ustad Amir Khan, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Nazakat Ali Khan-Salamat Ali Khan of Pakistan, Kishori Amonkar, Zakir Hussain and many others. He also performed on-stage with the sitar player Ravi Shankar and tabla player Alla Rakha at the classical music concerts. He is acknowledged both as a sarangi player and a vocalist and has several albums to his credit.

He has taught music producers such as Sukshinder Shinda and Ram Gopal Varma (who provided the music for his film, ''Deyyam'') to play the ''sarangi''. He had many students, but few gandhabandh disciples are Bollywood music composer & Director Vishal Bhardwaj, Sandesh Shandaliya, composer Ilaiyaraaja, Gurdas Maan, Falu, Anand Vyas, Ikram Khan, Vinod Pawar, Sabir khan, Dilshad Khan, and Deeyah, a Norwegian-born singer, and he performed on her debut album ''I Alt Slags Lys'' in 1992.

He contributed vocals and ''sarangi'' to Dizrhythmia's first LP and Gavin Harrison's 1998 solo album Sanity & Gravity. He sang " Albela Sajan Aayo Re..."along with Kavita Krishnamurthy and Shankar Mahadevan in the Hindi film ''Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam'' in 1999. He has also given his voice in films like Maqbool, Kachche Dhaage, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Parzania, Jab We Met, Agni Varsha, Superstar, Rahul and Paanch. He also performed or recorded with Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

In 1982, the Oscar-winning film Gandhi also featured his music and thereafter he recorded for other Hollywood films such as Heat and Dust in 1983 (Merchant Ivory productions). Sultan Khan played the sad sarangi music during the sorrowful scenes of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and funeral. In 1993, he performed along with Ustad Alla Rakha and Ustad Zakir Hussain in one of the rooms at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom where eminent persons were in attendance to witness a rare musical performance. After that, he became a regular artist for BBC Radio London. He was also interviewed for the BBC world service and also composed the musical track for the BBC 2 documentary "London Calling"(1997).

The association with film maker Ismail Merchant further when Ustad Sultan Khan together with Ustad Zakir Hussain composed the soundtrack for the film In Custody (1993) and where the musical score adapted to suite a particular genre of the Urdu language