Classical Indian music has lost one of its greats. Ustad Rashid Khan (1968-2024), of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana, was only 55 when he was snatched away from us on January 9 this year, succumbing to prostate cancer. He had at least 20 years of singing ahead of him. His passing reminds me of the premature loss of genius Carnatic instrumentalist Mandolin Srinivas at 47; of the great G N Balasubramaniam; and, earlier, of Amir Khan, Nikhil Banerjee, and D V Paluskar.
Rashid burst on the scene after an apprenticeship in Kolkata. His gurus were his maternal uncle, Ustad Nisar Hussain Khan, and Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana, founded by Ustad Inayat Hussain Khan, his great grandfather. As in the manner of all great artistes, Rashid achieved a style which was his own quite early on.
Our sense of loss is compounded by what might have been — for classical Indian musicians are at their peak in their 50s and 60s; and some perform, with vigour, well into their 70s and 80s. I valorise listening to musicians in their later years: There is no substitute for the depth accruing from the rich and varied experiences of life which impacts your art.
I first heard Rashid Khan in the late 1980s in Kolkata. I was in the city to perform at Kala Mandir, and he was featured elsewhere. I made it a point to travel across the city to listen to him, a young singer holding out a rare promise. His rise was meteoric.
In an age when trite music goes “viral” and, for the most part, the cult of the impermanent permeates our lives — Rashid was heard quizzing a journalist: “Yeh going viral kya hota hai? (What does this ‘going viral’ mean)?” Again: In climes in which the hideously lightweight and fleeting is prized, the grandeur, depth, and mellifluousness of Rashid’s music was both a benchmark and a beacon.
In classical dance and music, and in multiple art forms, there are no shortcuts to diligent and regular study. Once you have been through the rigours of intensive training, the music and dance simply flow, even as you continue learning — and, indeed, must. Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra taught me Odissi for 12 consecutive years, but I stayed with him for 30 years, always learning, training, and being enriched; as well as performing with him across the world.
Rashid’s voice was one of his most prized natural assets — it was sonorous, vigorous, and deep, yet memorably pleasing and silken. In its timbre, it sounds very much like another favourite singer of mine, Ustad Amir Khan. The popular lexicon of Hindustani music will likely categorise this as dard (a yearning, where pleasure and pain are conflated) — it is similar to what the great pianist Dinu Lipati possessed: Critics called it el duende or the holy spirit. Dard to my mind, also symbolises the simultaneous holding of — in your voice, music, and art — the delight, mystery, and angst of existence. In absorbing art, as one critic noted: “We are carried out beyond ourselves to find ourselves.”
Rashid’s music does precisely that for us: It is transformative and expansive. His aalap and vilambit khayal showed him up as the master he was. When you listen to him sing Bageshri, or Bhimpalasi, the shared ecstasy ultimately leads to a heightened sense of being. All great art effortlessly effects such a transformation.
Today, some musicians use music to divide, and disrupt — through the artifices of vociferation, and feeble impertinences. Rashid Khan’s music was — as all great music is — a healing, cohesive, and illuminating force. In a memorable jugalbandi in Bengaluru, Rashid sang the popular Kannada song by the seer Vyasaraya (1450-1539) Krishna nee begane baro — urging the child Krishna to swiftly appear — in the raga Kalyani/Yaman Kalyan. As I listened to Rashid, I thought, the infant Krishna would have crawled right up to him, owing to the lilting richness and the genuine affection in his voice.
Where is the Christian or the Hindu versus the Muslim here? Why is there a need to debate in which century, and from which creed, Hindustani music originated? Bharata’s Natyashastra — a treatise on dance, the arts, and theatre, devotes an entire chapter to classical Indian music, and dates back to the 2nd century BCE. Where is the sense in being territorial when the very language of music is universal and transcends barriers? Why can we not let music grant to all — rich or poor, young or old, Parsi, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish — the aquamarine sky of the soul? Empedeocles wrote about how happy the person is who has gained the wealth of divine thought. Even happier are those whose intrinsic natures have allowed them the bliss of merging into the immeasurable beyond, through music.
The raga Bageshri, a midnight raga, is a favourite of mine (it was the late great Kishori Amonkar’s favourite too, as she told me decades ago). When you listen to Rashid sing Bageshri, you have scant need for much else: His melodies rise to address all of creation. Rashid always sang in perfect sur, never once deviating from the rigours of exacting pitch.
Music is illumination — Astraya purusham swayam jyotirbhavati: In this state, the person herself becomes the light; and she is also svena jyotisha prasvapithi, that is: revealing herself by her own lustre. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV.iii.9.) Rashid Khan was his own light, and his music was our light too.
The writer was appointed Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. She is a global adviser on public policy, communication and international relations and an Odissi and Bharatanatyam artiste and choreographer
