Raag Alhaiya Bilawal | Ustad Shujaat Khan & Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri | Sitar & Tabla | Music of India

#darbarfestival | “At the age of 17 I left home to carve my own life...rebellion is not easy to stomach. Sleeping exposed in public parks...it is a very tough call.” (Shujaat Khan)
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Shujaat Khan hails from the illustrious Etawah (‘Imdadkhani’) gharana alongside greats such as Imdad Khan, Imrat Khan, and Shahid Parvez. His famous father Vilayat was a highly demanding teacher: “after strumming the strings of the sitar for several exhausting hours, overnight practice that would make my fingers bleed, he felt that I wasn’t good enough. When I performed, there was always the burden of matching the sky-high expectations”.

Despite learning his father’s musical style in impressive depth, their personal bond became strained: “At the age of 17 I left home to carve my own life...rebellion is not easy to stomach. Sleeping exposed in public parks, washing utensils to fund your food, no certainty of your present or future and devoid of familial support, it is a very tough call.”

But he eventually forged his own successful career, taking his family’s innovations in gayaki ang (singing style) even further by singing in unison with his instrument. He has worked in fusion settings, soloing with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and forming the Grammy-nominated band Ghazal with Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla and Kayhan Kalhor on Persian kamancheh.

“I can’t say I am against tradition; on the other hand I am considered an open modern man – I have never forced lifestyle choices on either of my children; my music reflects my nature and has a lot of new with the old.” (Shujaat Khan)

Swapan Chaudhari is a living legend of the tabla. Born into a large Bengali family, his father was a doctor and composer who encouraged the discipline of music practice while also expressing reservations about the idea of it as a career. But his first guru Santosh Krishna Biswas recognised his extraordinary talent, which also caught the ears of sarod great Ali Akbar Khan, who lived on the same block as the family. By the age of ten he was accompanying the latter to the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music in California, helping with lesson demonstrations.

But he did not turn to tabla full-time yet, completing an economics degree and almost pursuing further study at Harvard. But Hindustani music’s inescapable call beckoned, and he commenced a masters’ degree in it before launching into a stellar career, quickly turning the heads of senior artists and soon becoming the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music’s first director of percussion.

He has accompanied several generations of top musicians, energetically committing himself to a performance schedule that would exhaust musicians half his age (once he accompanied eight top artists in 24 hours, including Nikhil Banerjee, Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Jasraj, and Bhimsen Joshi). Alongside classical performance he has worked with artists including Stevie Wonder, Larry Coryell, and Kayhan Kalhor, and shows few signs of slowing down, saying that “tabla is limitless. I never want to stop." Listen to more of Swapan here:
-Dhir Dhir | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdR7G_gkfdw

Recorded at Darbar Festival 2012, at London’s Southbank Centre:
-Shujaat Khan (sitar)
-Swapan Chaudhuri (tabla)

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Видео Raag Alhaiya Bilawal | Ustad Shujaat Khan & Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri | Sitar & Tabla | Music of India канала darbarfestival