|
|
 Email this Page |  Write to us
Images: Remembering Ustad Bismillah Khan
August 21, 2006
Born to Paigambar Khan and Mitthan, whose ancestors were court musicians in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar, the Ustad earned his name when his grandfather uttered Bismillah after looking at the newborn.
He took preliminary lessons of shehnai from his grandfather who used to take him to the courts of the Dumraon estate. He also trained under his uncle, the late Ali Bux 'Vilayatu', a shehnai player attached to Varanasi's Vishwanath Temple. His family, he often remembered, used to perform at a temple on the banks of the Ganges for a few rupees.
Image: Ustad Bismillah Khan in conversation with President A P J Abdul Kalam (3rd from left), then finance minister Jaswant Singh (behind Kalam) and Congress President Sonia Gandhi (left) at Parliament House on August 7, 2003. Khan presented a duet with his vocalist daughter Soma Ghosh.
Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
Also read:
'He became one with the shehnai'
|
|
|
Advertisement
