When ethnomusicologist Max Katz first embarked on his journey to unravel the story of the legendary Lucknow-Shahjahanpur gharana — which he tells in his path-breaking book, Lineage of Loss: Counter-narratives of North Indian Music — he decided that his focus would not be on ‘famous’ musicians. “As a scholar I was not interested in people who had the most money or were the most renowned, although that is the academic tradition,” says Katz.
When Katz came to Lucknow in the summer of 2004, he met Idris Khan, the son of the late sitar maestro Ilyas Khan. “He was not in a great condition when I met him. He was gaunt and impoverished, unemployed, entirely unknown to the world of Hindustani music. Idris Khan was struggling for survival, and the living legacy of his music inheritance was itself moribund.”
Katz asked Idris Khan a lot of questions about his lineage. “He also told me that if I really wanted to know more about the gharana I must meet his cousin, Irfan Muhammad Khan.”
Not that coterie
So the scholar travelled to Assam’s Numaligarh where Irfan Khan, the sarod player, was staying. The musician, the khalifa — the senior most proponent — of the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur gharana, would become the soul of Lineage of Loss, but the duo’s association would grow beyond the book. Today, both of them are working on the documentation of 300 gats (compositions or miniature ragas) exclusive to this gharana.
Irfan Khan graduated in music from Allahabad and also holds a degree in history. Today, he lives in Kolkata, and he says teaching is what keeps him going since concerts are hard to come by.
“I moved to Kolkata as my father was recruited by the Nawab of Jalpaiguri to be a court musician in the 1950s. It was so difficult to get concerts, there was a sort of monopoly. You had to be part of that coterie and I was the last person to do that,” says Irfan Khan. He then lived for three years in Kabul, again teaching the sarod and sitar.
Irfan Khan’s grandfather Sakhawat Khan emerged as the principal representative of the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur gharana after his marriage to musican Kaukab Khan’s sister, which was a decisive moment, merging two gharanas — the Lucknow or Bulandshahr gharana and the Shahjahanpur gharana.
Sakhawat Khan’s grandfather Enayat Ali Khan is believed to be one of the first Hindustani musicians to travel abroad to perform in London for the 40th anniversary of the reign of Queen Victoria.
No to gimmicks
What was the reason then for this decline and loss of a rich lineage? Both Katz and Irfan Khan agree on two possibilities — their unwillingness to ingratiate themselves to organisers and a resistance to dilute the gayaki to suit popular taste. So artistes like Ilyas Khan now exist as mere memories in the minds of connoisseurs.
“Almost every musician in this family has talked about how the style of music is changing but that they were not going to change. In a book that he left incomplete, Kaukab Khan writes that there’s orthodox music and there’s stuff for the masses and that we don’t play for the masses. This made them ‘unpopular,” says Katz.
Irfan Khan recently performed in Kerala (Kochi) after a gap of 40 years, and Katz recorded it. He tells me that he can count the number of performances he has given these past decades on the fingers of one hand. His was a simple, straight, raga-rich rendering.
“Exposition and interpretation of a raga is given the foremost importance. Virtuosity is in this and not in gimmicks. Features of the style begin from the alaap where the raag-bhava should manifest. The essence of the style is based on dhrupad in contrast to the thumri-ang style. We do not indulge in unnecessary ornamentation that can harm the unfolding of the raag and however fast you play, the raag-bhava should be distinct and clear,” explains Irfan Khan.
Over six years of ethnographic and archival research and 15 years of apprenticeship, Katz has traced the displacement of this gharana and its erasure from the collective memory.
As Sakhawat Khan wrote, “my lineage has been the custodians of the sarod, rabab and sursingar from Mughal times, whose branches have spread all over India.” With this book, this ancient gharana, central to so much of Hindustani music, comes to life again.
