‘I’m lucky that my instrument is a sitar’

This was not the first time Khan had collaborated with A R Rahman,however. The 30-year-old sitarist has worked with the renowned composer on projects such as ‘Slumdog Millionaire’,‘Jodha-Akbar’,‘Raavan’,the Commonwealth Games theme song and many others. In fact,Khan’s sitar has been much raved and applauded in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’’s signature tracks,‘Mausam’ and ‘Escape’.

On October 1,Khan will perform a fusion concert at Mazda Hall with violinists Marie-Luise and Christoph Dingler from Berlin. The concert is to be a marriage of two contrasting styles – the constantly improvising and unpredictable Indian classical style and the complex,disciplined Western classical style. “We have never performed together before but we have discussed our performance and I was very excited to learn that they already know so much about Indian music. The fact that there are two violins and not just one,will make the concert even more unpredictable and complex and we will alternate between following rules and tradition and improvising a little bit,” says Khan.

Khan hails from the sixth generation of an unbroken line of classical musicians from the Mewati gharana. His studies in music and sitar were deeply rooted in the Indian classical style,passed on to him by his father and teacher,Ustad Siraj Khan. Despite his puritanical music education,Khan aspired to do new things,make radically different music with his sitar. He has since fused his family’s traditional knowledge and style with modern western genres such as flamenco,electronica,jazz,rock-lounge and even thematic film scores and Sufi. “I am lucky that my instrument is the sitar. It allows me to explore all the nuances of pull,slide and stretch on the finger board,” he adds.