A music teacher par excellence (1862-1972)
Allauddin Khan or Baba Allauddin Khan, born in 1862, was a Bengali shorodi and multi-instrumentalist, composer and one of the most renowned North Indian music teachers of the 20th century.
A descendant of Mian Tansen of Emperor Akbar’s court, this native of East Bengal enjoyed a financially secure childhood. His father Sadhu Khan played sitar, while an older brother, Aftabuddin Khan, played many other instruments. As a child, he would sneak into the family’s music room and try out his brothers’ instruments.
Despite his obvious talents, Allauddin was discouraged from playing music by his father, which made him run away from home at the age of eight. A group of itinerant musicians heading toward Dacca accepted him as he pretended to be an orphan. He soon learned to play Indian drums including tabla, dhol, pakhawaj, and wind instruments including clarinet, cornet, and trumpet. After six years, he apprenticed himself to a Bengali singer, Nulo Gopal in Calcutta (now Kolkata). After his guru’s death, he became a pupil of Amritalal Dutt, with an aim of becoming a sarod artiste.
Later, as a tabla player in the orchestra of the Star Theater, conductor Robert Lobo mentored and introduced him to the Western classical music tradition. Allauddin struggled financially though, often eating one meal a day at food dispensaries for the poor.
Travelling to Muktogacha in eastern Bengal in his early twenties, he was awestruck by a performance of Ustad Ahmad Ali, a sarod player in Raja Jagat Kishore’s court. Convincing Ali to become his guru, for the next four years, he devoted his full attention to learning the sarod, and soon his skills were such that he was instructed to go solo.
Later, at Rampur, the centre of Hindustani classical music, of the 500 musicians serving in the court of the Nawab of Rampur, he managed to convince the most important Wazir Khan, to become his guru. For two years however, he served as a servant and errand boy. However, a letter intercepted by Wazir Khan revealing the suicide of Allauddin’s wife, who he had left the day after marrying, blew up his tale of being an orphan. Instructed to make amends with his family, upon his return to Rampur, Wazir Khan made him his chief disciple and revealed the secrets of music. Following Wazir’s death, Allauddin began performing on his own.
Besides serving as a court musician to the Maharajah of Maihar, he was also the Principal of the Maihar College of Music, and formed the Maihar Band with 100 orphaned children whom he taught to play strings, brass, bagpipes, and drums.
A great master of rhythm, he created some unique and complex timeless pieces of music, including innumerable ragas, like Arjun, Bhagabati, Chandika, Dhankosh etc. He also mastered several Indian classical instruments, such as the sitar, surbahar, sarod, pakhawaj, tabla and a wide variety of percussion instruments. He could demonstrate nearly 1,200 compositions of nearly 3,000 dhrupads and dhamars collected from his Ustads, which expanded and developed his pedagogy and made him a most sought-after music teacher. He was a hard task master and deliberately maintained a tough image, as he was ‘always worried that soft treatment on his part would only spoil his pupils’.
A mentor and teacher to Ravi Shankar, son Ali Akbar Khan, daughter Annapurna Devi, Nikhil Banerjee, Vasant Rai, Pannalal Ghosh and others, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1958,the Padma Vibhushan in 1971, and earlier in 1952, he was conferred the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship for lifetime contribution to Indian music. He passed away at the age of 91 years, on 6 September 1972 leaving a rich legacy for posterity.