ILYAS KHAN | Raga Kafi (1956)

An album with Ilyas Khan Sahebs music can be found here: Ustad Ilyas Khan - Sitar Pandit Shamta Prasad - Tabla Recorded in 1956 at the Constitution Club/Delhi After Raga Chayanat this is the second piece of the Ustads earliest surviving concert recording that allows a fascinating glimpse into his prime years. 98% of his recorded material in the archives of his nephew and shagird Ustad Irfan Khan Sahib stems from the final decade of Ilyas Khansahebs life. This Kafi Thumri has been released earlier in CD format by Sangeet Natak Akademi but with a wrong pitch & speed. This is a corrected version with a pitch around the Ustads usual C-sharp. Sitarya Ustad Ilyas Khan (1924-1989) -second son of the legendary sarod maestro Ustad Sakhawat Hussain Khan (1875-1955) of Lucknow-Shajahanpur Gharana was a phenomenal musician with a huge repertoire of Ragas and old compositions. Most of his life he was teaching music at the Bhatkhande College in Lucknow and lived a simple life devoted to music. “Ilyas Khan was roughly a contemporary of Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan. Yet few listeners today have heard of him, let alone his recorded music. He added to his gharana’s knowledge bank by studying, in addition to his family’s repertoire, more gats and dhrupads from the sitar gharana of Kalpi, near Lucknow. His non-family teachers had been the ustads Abdul Ghani Khan, a dhrupad singer, and Yusuf Ali Khan, a sitarist and sitar maker (also the original designer of the kharaj-pancham sitar that is today synonymous with Ravi Shankar).“ (quoted from Arnab Chakrabarty´s article in ) This Kafi is a follow up to Ilyas Khans teacher Yusuf Ali Khans Kafi which we published two weeks ago: More clips of the Ustad from our archive: The picture was collected from “The Indian Listener“ by Kiran aka Pokri Poki