Musical Musings

When scores of musicians descended on the FICCI Auditorium last month for a tribute to Ustad Vilayat Khan,Kolkata-based Jayanto Chatterjee,60,surprised the audience that included Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Asha Bhonsle,with his documentary on the artist,Aaftaab-e-Sitar ,that has interesting vignettes from his personal life and a little on his musical influences. One of the few productions on the reclusive Khan,it will be screened across India and Chatterjee is currently working with director Abhijit Chattopadhyaya on the DVD release of the film.

“I was fascinated by his music since I saw him playing at my uncle’s music academy in Kolkata in the early 1960’s. The documentary has his point of view on music and also answers questions about the relationships he shared with his contemporaries,especially between him and Pandit Ravi Shankar that exploded in the public arena many times,” says Chatterjee who says he has some salacious details about his rivalry with Pandit Ravi Shankar without elaborating exactly what. “He is known for adding the gayaki ang to his sitar because he started off wanting to be a singer. Everyone in his family was a sitarist,” says Chatterjee.

Chatterjee approached Khan with the idea of the documentary in 2001 at Princeton,New Jersey and the maestro apparently refused. “He did not like these kinds of ventures. It was after a lot of persuasion that he agreed,” says Chatterjee whose documentary has no narrative or voice over. The only voice that one hears is of Khan and his sitar being played in the background.

However,other important aspects of Khan’s personality,like his passion for ballroom dancing,horse riding and smoking cigars apart from his collection of firearms and antique European crockery have hardly been touched upon. “We couldn’t force him to talk about what he didn’t want to,” says Chatterjee. Khan’s humble beginnings,his relationship with guru and father Enayat Khan and how he became the scion of the Etawa gharana are the mainstay of Aaftaab-e-Sitar.