"Along with the steady diet sitar, sarod, and tabla, several new instruments and players came to my attention. The first of these was Ustad Bismillah Khan, master of the sonorous double-reed instrument known as shehnai. This beautiful wind instrument, with finger holes and a bell-shaped opening at the bottom, sounded to me like a hybrid of soprano saxophone and oboe, and Bismillah Khan’s tone very much influenced what Coltrane and Terry Riley would do with the soprano sax. Primarily used at weddings, the shehnai had been rejected as a classical instrument until Bismillah Khan elevated it to a higher status among listeners. His unique fingertips and sublime breath control produced the necessary range of sounds for raga making shehnai one of the more popular instruments in North India."
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Bismillah Khan
Bismillah Khan (Urdu: استاد بسم اللہ خان صاحب; March 21, 1916 – August 21, 2006) was a legendary Indian musician of the wind instrument the Shehnai which he popularized and brought it to a pinnacle of glory and for which he got the honorific Ustad prefixed to his name. The Shehnai, which was a folk instrument played primarily during traditional ceremonies was elevated to the status of playing solo on the concert stage. During his life time he was one of the few artists who received all the four
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