VOCAL
Amir Khan's Aesthetics of Music
Music is that which originates from the heart and touches the soul
This article was last updated on 22 October 2021.
First, I'd like to emphasize that the best way to learn about music is not by reading about it but by listening to it with undivided attention. The same applies here: the best way to learn about how the well-known and highly influential Indian classical vocalist Amir Khan applied his sense of aesthetics in his music is to listen to it carefully and compare it with other musicians of his time. In this piece, I'll point out some characteristics of his music. I should also mention that I'm hardly an expert in music.
नग़मा वही नग़मा है जो रूह सुने और रूह सुनाए — music is that which originates from the heart and touches the soul
— Amir Khan
Secondly, a personal note. It is hard to put into words how much Amir Khan has impacted my life. I was first introduced to his music — and that of many others — by my parents, who were music lovers and who raised my sister and me in a musical atmosphere. My favorite movie at the time was the 1952 musical Baiju Bawra, for which Amir Khan and another well-known vocalist, D. V. Paluskar, had lent their voices. Amir Khan's peaceful, easygoing approach to music and his deep soothing voice appealed to me. Since late 2001 I have been suffering from depression, and over the past decade or so, Amir Khan's music has become part of my treatment: it has calmed me by expressing my feelings and encouraging me to take deep breaths as I sing along, and at times even kept me alive. Perhaps most importantly, his music has made me more compassionate and encouraged me to be a better person.
Indian classical music, a refined art form of music, traditionally eschews direct expression of evocative emotion of the kind produced by devotional music and other popular music, instead of exhibiting restrained passion and passively eliciting a response from the audience. However, in the modern Hindustani (North Indian) vocal genre known as khayal, there has been a post-independence movement to make the music more intimate, less aloof, and closer to popular music by, for instance, incorporating "lighter" ornaments or adornments. Vocalists have championed this romanticist movement from several gharanas (music "schools" or major styles), including Jasraj of Mewati Gharana and Kishori Amonkar of Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana. Amir Khan, who was a classicist, resisted this movement. He recognized the importance of beauty in classical music. Still, he refused to mess with the raga (the melodic skeleton or framework consisting of notes, relative frequencies of use of notes, and characteristic movements) or use light ornaments to make the music "more beautiful," believing in freedom of expression but only within the traditional rules of classical music, remaining faithful to the spirit and grammar of the raga and liberally using "heavier" ornaments such as kan swaras (grace notes linking the main note to the two nearest notes depending on the raga). He tried to make classical music more appealing to the masses by singing short compositions for Indian films, but he remained a purist even for films. He did not dilute the classical element to make the songs more directly appealing. Even so, especially for classical musicians and listeners, the beauty is very apparent in his performances, to the extent that musicians like Nikhil Banerjee would be speechless when asked about Amir Khan's music. Amir Khan's music is like that first love that never fades.
A mostly self-taught musician, Ustad Amir Khan ('Ustad' is an honorific for an expert, especially a musician) developed his gayaki (singing style) following his introverted and thoughtful personality and with his voice, influenced by the styles of Abdul Waheed Khan (vilambit laya, or slow tempo, and the merukhand technique), Rajab Ali Khan (taans, or fast melodic movements) and Aman Ali Khan (Carnatic, or South Indian, ragas and Carnatic-style sargam, or solfège singing). This style, known as the Indore gharana, is a unique fusion of intellect and emotion. It blends the spiritual flavor and grandeur of the older dhrupad style with the ornate vividness of the more recent khyal style. Amir Khan's music is intellectually satisfying, but because he emphasized aesthetics instead of mere technique, he never overemphasized the intellectual aspect of classical music. One example is the kind of banaav that he used to go from one note to another.
He rarely engaged in rhythmic acrobatics, believing that rhythmic play should be a spur-of-the-moment thing, not pre-planned or rehearsed. The musician should preserve the dignity of the music by not trying to compete with the tabla player. Also, if you listen to his Darbari LP with the vilambit bandish (composition) "Eri Bir Ri," you can hear the poignant emotions of unrequited love and world-weariness, mostly through the swara-uccharan (the way a note is enunciated) and the elongated notes in ati-vilambit laya (very slow tempo). Still, the classicist aloofness gives it dignity so that, as opposed to someone who cannot regulate their emotions and makes a scene after being rejected, you see someone who is disappointed but capable of accepting reality and capable of introspection. Introspection is a key component of Amir Khan's style; he used silences or pauses strategically to encourage the listener to think about what he had just presented and sometimes to fill in the blanks, recognizing that sometimes things are more powerful if they are left unsaid.
Amir Khan had a rich baritone, open-throated voice. His voice had some limitations in the high octave, but he turned them fruitfully and effortlessly to his advantage by improvising mostly in the lower and middle octaves. He generally did slow-tempo, leisurely raga development except with Carnatic ragas, which he typically rendered in medium tempo. His improvisational style in alap (the biggest improvisatory portion of a raga performance) consisted of an aesthetically detailed, roughly note-by-note badhat (progression). He used the merukhand combinatorial technique. Still, his badhat was not fixed or methodical (as, for example, it was for Abdul Waheed Khan), in the sense that if at the moment he felt like going one way or another, he would do so. He did not do a purely merukhandi alap but rather inserted merukhandi passages — ones that did not violate the raga's grammar — throughout his performance. Used with various note approaches and the kan swaras that he used liberally, merukhand gave Amir Khan many possibilities. His style used softer gamaks (hitting a note from another relatively quickly in an oscillatory manner) and a sparing application of murki (a small cluster of notes sung rapidly in a subtle manner), with uniform voice production. He often used the taals (musical meters) Jhoomra and Ektaal for the vilambit portion and generally preferred a simple theka (basic tabla strokes that define the taal) from the tabla accompanist. Some have criticized him for his ati-vilambit alaps in Jhoomra taal, arguing that slowing Jhoomra down caused it to lose its characteristic "swaying" motion, but for Amir Khan, whose gayaki was swara-oriented, just as a khyal bandish is important but in a sense is a peg on which to hang the melody, the taal is another peg on which to hang the improvisation, and slowing down the taal allowed him to improvise for a meaningful length of time in between singing the mukhda (first line of the sthayi, which is the first part of the bandish), which is a refrain that is repeated after a foray of improvisation in the khyal genre. His alap was followed by gradually speeding up "floating" sargams (solfège) inspired by Carnatic music.
His sargams set the stage for daanedaar (clear and crisp) taans with hard aakaar and by bol-taans (taans using the words of the bandish), with gamaks, multiple laya jatis in a single taan and a mixture of taan types (including chhoot, sapaat, bal, sargam) in a single taan. Khansahib often started with a predictable taan and then introduced taans with unpredictable movements and jumps, following the style of Rajab Ali Khan.
He would typically finish off the raga with a madhyalaya or drut laya (medium or fast tempo) chhota khayal and a ruba'idar tarana; the latter is a Farsi song (specifically in the Dari variant) that uses Sufi-style repetitive chanting of certain phrases. He helped popularize the ruba'idar tarana as well as Farsi khyalnuma bandishes. For taranas, which he treated similarly to a chhota khyal, he would sing the Farsi verse loosely and then take a taan to come back to the sam (first beat of the rhythmic cycle).
While he could do traditional layakari (rhythmic play), including bol-baant (rhythmic variations using the song text), which he has demonstrated in a few recordings, in his style, the layakari was generally more subtle (following Kirana style), and he rarely used tihai (a polyrhythmic technique used to show off virtuosity).
With his leisurely style, inspired mainly by three vocalists, and with his sense of aesthetics about how one should perform classical music, Amir Khan was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, not only for vocalists but also for instrumentalists, especially for the more relaxed pace and for a more thorough exploration of the raga.
Written by Bhuvanesh Bhatt, with parts taken from the Wikipedia page I'd written and edited over a few years, thanks to Pulak Gupta for corrections!