ILYAS KHAN | Raga Desi (1979)

An album with Ilyas Khan Sahebs music can be found here: https://matyasitar.bandcamp.com/album...

Alap & Drut Teental
performed on 3.2.79

Ustad Ilyas Khan - Sitar
Ustad Ahmad Miyan - Tabla

Sitarya Ustad Ilyas Khan (1924-1989) -second son of the legendary sarod maestro Ustad Sakhawat Hussain Khan (1875-1955) of Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana was a phenomenal musician with a huge repertoire of Ragas and compositions. Most of his life he was teaching music at the Bhatkhande College in Lucknow and lived a 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 scroll.in)

Tabla player Ustad Ahmad Miyan was born in 1946 in Barabanki, a small town near Lucknow. He learnt Tabla from Ustads Ahmed Ali Khan and Ahmedjan Thirakwa. He was also an employee at the Bhatkhande Music College in Lucknow.

Recording and pictures taken from the archive of Ustad Irfan MD Khan.
The first picture was collected from "The Indian Listener" by Kiran aka Pokri Poki.

More clips of the Ustad from our archive:

   • ILYAS KHAN