ustad sultan khan - raag jaijaiwanti on the sarangi.
i met ustad sultan khan once, before a concert at mehrangarh in jodhpur, in 2009. i remember two things about it. one, we were talking about his occasional foray into hindi film music, something he viewed with evident distaste. clearly not an appeaser by nature, he tried, while complaining about film music, to soften the blow by talking about how much he liked older music, with truly great singers like kishore kumar and lata mangeshkar. “ab kya?” he said. “ab ladkiyon ke saath gawaate hain.” now they make one sing with young girls.
i felt monstrously, personally hurt to hear it. i had also disliked listening, for example, to shreya ghoshal’s (uncharacteristic, incidentally) loose grasp of notes on bhor bhaye from delhi-6, such a departure from the unassailable voice of bade ghulam ali khan, with whom she sang, but it upset me to remember how hidebound our classical traditions can be, when a great musician can not only unfairly dismiss a whole popular form but also ascribe its indignities to the fact that he had to share a track with a girl.
the other thing i remember is the sound of his voice, and his sarangi, filling up the fort like moonlight. everything that was wrong with the fortress as a symbol of royal splendour was subsumed by its rightness as a setting for a great musician, someone whose singing could pull earth and sky closer together.
in spite of his dislike of bollywood, its composers gave him some remarkable songs to sing. his work on vishal bhardwaj’s maqbool is my favourite. he sang dheemo re, as well as a part on the more well-known jhin min jhini which still gives me gooseflesh to hear.
“allah ka pyaara woh toh / jag unjhiyaara woh toh,” he sings at the end of that song: beloved of god / the light of the world. mere mehboob ke ghar rang hai. indeed.
