August 5-11, 2004

music

Star of the Sitar

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Talking shop with Shafaatullah Khan — the internationally renowned Indian classical music master of King of Prussia.

by Mary Armstrong

"Healing has become such a fashion!" sputters Shafaatullah Khan. "Everyone has become a healer! People don't want to do the work. To be a healer one has to have a connection with the Almighty. Call it Allah, Yahweh — you must have that connection to get the power from God to put it through your hands. The elements are coming out of your own hands."

Khan is, as far he knows, the only master of the three great instruments of Indian classical music: tabla, sitar and surbahar, sitar's big brother. That's probably why Deepak Chopra invited him to record a series of CDs designed to work with the Indian ayurvedic system of healing by body types, the doshas. These were, to Khan's knowledge, the first recordings ever made where the sitarist is also the tabla player. He mentions this while lamenting the modern trend of quick-fix spirituality.

"Do your prayers. Avoid drugs, alcohol. Don't cheat people." You're right to think he sounds like a teacher. He regularly opens his King of Prussia home to live-in music students.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"This is the first element that a person must acquire before becoming real musician or a healer: the regular connection with God. I do it through my prayers five times a day. It doesn't matter what religion — observing helps you to develop your talent."

Khan is on a roll.

"I'm not here to be a superstar! I appreciate the name and fame God has given me, but my mission is to unite people with love, to lift them in love and peace. I work towards nonviolence. I want to try to be a good role model in my living."

Of course, he is a superstar of Indian classical music. And if life had taken him another way, he could have been a movie star.

Born in Bombay, now Mumbai, Khan's childhood started out in a posh neighborhood surrounded by the film stars of Bollywood. As a small child he and his four siblings were in commercials produced by the filmmaking side of the family. Yes, if you were in India years ago, you may recall him singing jingles for an ayurvedic tonic.

How many years ago? Well, Khan is coy. He giggles and says, "Oh, I wish you wouldn't ask that." He'll admit he's "in his 30s," but then again, so did Jack Benny.

Khan's father, world-famous sitarist Imrat Khan, had no desire to see centuries of the esteemed Khan family musical dynasty end by a seduction into full-time film work.

Shafaat Khan laughs. "If the family had not moved back to Calcutta when we were all very young, I might be the one you see peeking out from behind palm trees and singing in those big musical numbers." He lauds Bollywood for bringing Indian culture to screens around the world, but laments the fact that there are rarely any Indian instruments heard in the soundtracks.

In Calcutta, Indian classical music and its players were revered. The family returned to the home of Shafaat's grandfather, Inayat Khan, another world-renowned sitarist. How renowned? Well, they lived on Inayat Khan Avenue.

Imagine the typical tropical bungalow — green, shuttered for coolness, a back yard lush with jasmine and henna, mango and guava. "Our house in Calcutta was a hub," recalls Khan. "Dignitaries and film stars and ambassadors would be brought there to be entertained."

His father's musical colleagues frequently stopped by as well. "I was so lucky, the best musicians of India would be jamming with my father." Among them: singers Ustad Amir Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and legendary tabla player Ahmad Jaan Thirakhwa. The Khan family was close friends with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late qawwal (Islamic devotion singing) legend.

Music was constantly in the air. "My father would play musical games with us all the time," says Khan. "For example, rather than calling us by name, he would sing a short pattern of notes. Each of us knew who he meant."

It's no surprise that Khan was fascinated by tabla even as a young child. His distant relative, world-famous tabla player Ustad Ibrahim Khan, was his teacher. "I practiced 11 hours a day!" His reward for that devotion to tabla was a concert before the queen mother at age 11.

Khan has made his home in the Philadelphia area since 1990, when Penn offered him an adjunct position teaching introduction to tabla. The mango and guava won't grow in King of Prussia, but there is still the sweet, relaxing scent of jasmine wafting into the sunroom. "That is where I do my prayers and yoga and where I teach my students."

As a single man with no children, Khan replicates the learning process he experienced in Calcutta for his specially chosen pupils. He terms himself a "very private person" yet he allows students from around the continent to board with him for weeks at a time, to get the proper saturation. "Indian music is different. You must learn the mannerisms, the culture. The music is also very spiritual. Students have to learn all that."

Indian classical music also demands a real time investment. Just before this interview begins, he bids farewell to a group of his proteges. "These students have been here for four hours. They do jam a bit, but when I go to advanced subjects they have to listen; that raises the standard," he explains.

"With this kind of music you do not take a formal hour lesson, pay and go. What is important is what happens outside the lesson."

The specifics of studying under Khan may not be concrete, but his rules are simple: "The first is to observe and listen. The second is to learn the art. The third is to practice. If a student lacks in any of the above elements they can't have success, they can't be complete musicians."

And as much as Khan has been steeped in tradition, he is open to experimentation with the ages-old musical tradition he practices and preaches. He dabbles in fusion with the pop and rock veins — exploiting the possibilities of Western drums, bass and keyboards matched with sitar and tabla. He's putting the finishing touches (including the title) on a concerto for sitar, tabla, violin, viola, flute, piano, Indian drums and Western drums that will be performed by the Mansfield Orchestra. Indian classical music does not work with standard notation, so Khan is busy collaborating with his own students who do have that skill to bring the music to the orchestra in a form familiar to Western players.

"I'll always play Indian classical music, that's my forte and my heritage, which goes back to the 15th century," he says. "But one way of uniting the world is by playing music with other cultures."

Shafaatullah Khan plays Sun., Aug. 8, 7 p.m., $10, Concerts Under the Stars, Upper Merion Township Building Park, 175 W. Valley Forge Rd., King of Prussia, 610-265-1071.