Remembering a Legend

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin referred to him as ‘the greatest musician in the world’,while Pandit Ravi Shankar christened him the master of strings. Sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was hailed as one of the greatest musicians on the Indian classical scene.When he passed away this summer in San Fransisco after a prolonged kidney ailment,the music world went into mourning,especially his disciples Pandit Tejendra Narayan Majumdar and Anindya Banarjee.

“The music that had always enriched my soul suddenly fell silent,” says Majumdar,50. Two days after his death Majumdar and Banarjee decided to make a documentary on the reclusive maestro who valued privacy and did not allow any documentary on him while he was alive. The documentary titled Remembering the Legend will be screened in Delhi soon. It has some old recordings of Khan’s workshops and classes in the US and India apart from some rare pictures of Khan with his sister Annapurna Devi and guru bhai Pandit Ravi Shankar. The film also has interviews from the doyens of classical music like Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia,Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma,Asha Bhonsle and Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. “The only interview I have to add to the film is that of Pandit Ravi Shankar,considering the close association Baba had with him,” says Majumdar. Most of the footage in the documentary is unseen. “As students,we had access to quite a lot of rare recordings with us which is now in the public domain,” says Banarjee. The only voice is the film is that of Khan and his sarod. The duo was also helped by the West Bengal State Music Academy for some of their documented footage which was recorded when Khan was in Kolkata for a three-hour workshop. “We are not filmmakers. A few directors from the Bengali film industry helped us with the technical aspects of filmaking,” says Majumdar.

The documentary also gives a peek into Khan’s childhood which began under a strict father and guru Ustad Allauddin Khan. It trails him to Jodhpur where he became the court musician in the court of Jodhpur and follows him to Mumbai where he went on to work as a salaried musician with Navketan films. He founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Kolkata in 1956 and later began teaching in California and Switzerland.