Musicians From India

"My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision — it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past."

"Musical theater had become very predictable. I think Andrew felt that Bollywood musicals could be a new treat for the Western audience."

"It's an approximate count. If you have a hit film, you'll sell 5 million or 6 million CDs. Of my movies, at least 20 or 25 were really big hits. [Mind you, he adds], in India, we don't get royalties. Otherwise I'd be a very rich man. I wouldn't have to come to America!"

"I wanted to produce film songs that go beyond language or culture."

"The first day I was in a daze thinking, ‘What am I doing? What’s my role?’ and then slowly we started writing with each other, and it was great. It took me way back to my high school days when I was playing in a rock band."

"I'm always fascinated by the innocence of children and the baggage that we carry as adults which manipulates our decisions."

"An ideal world can definitely be created with a pure mind and optimistic results."

"Bombay, which sold about 120,000 copies, is widely rated as my most successful work, though Roja is definitely the score that brought me where I am today."

"I think musicians here [India] get ripped off. Music production houses take good care of artists abroad and though the upfront signing amount is much less than what I get here, the royalty takes care of future returns."

"That’s the reason I’m Zakir Hussain and not Zakir Hussain Allah Rakha Khan. And believe me there’s no pride when I say that."

"Zakir bhai is indeed a phenomenon of our times. It is not surprising that young tabla players are inspired or influenced by him but cloning will only give them a temporary impetus."

"The peerless North Indian tabla player...the blur of his fingers rivals the beat of a hummingbird’s wings."

"At seventeen Hussain went on forty-day self-imposed retreat known as a chilla, where a musician practices in isolation until a state is reached in which the music and musician become one. The removal of everyday distractions, combined with single-minded concentration on the practice allows the musician to attain a state of Samadhi or meditative absorption, where one enters into a deeper relationship with one’s own music, and comes in direct contact with the source of music itself. Visions and hallucinations are not uncommon, where one’s musical ancestors may appear and offer encouragement or criticism. What is certain is that the musician makes remarkable progress in his craft. Hussain recalls his first Chilla in Hart’s drumming “I saw things in the music that I had never seen before, new combinations, new patterns”. Six month’s later, against his father’s advice, Zakir was ready to do a second chilla. This time around, the visions were more intense, and Hussain had a premonition that he would soon go to America."

"The plan is to always have a plug into my past, where I am from. And how deep that is and having that gave me confidence to be able to expand. I am confident that I have something (music) that is backing me and that is always there for me... so that I can explore more, learn and grow more as an artiste and as a musician."

"Every winter I am here sometimes for two or four months. These are my roots, this is where I feel I must come to grow and learn as an artist. I must always come back to the guru to learn and grow more as a musician. There is no question of going anywhere and forgetting where I came from because that would be like losing my identity."

"What celebrity status, I think I am just a drummer. There are so many talented artists around here."

"There are incredible number of great Indian artists around like Aditya Kalyanpur, Subhankar Banerjee, Satyajit Talwakar, Amaan and Ayan, among women are Anuradha Pal and others. It is great that such musicians are around. But the media has not adopted to give them the push or put them in open. They deserve to be up there."

"Suddenly I am like the poster boy of music, but I think the whole idea is to realise how deep is the base of Indian art and culture, how many fabulous young artistes there are, how many incredible great senior artistes are present today but not seen in limelight. We all have our turn at being the spokesperson for something or the other," the renowned musician."

"Similarly people talk about me now but they don't realise that there are equally good tabla players around. I wouldn't call myself a torchbearer or anything of that sort. I am just one of those who is able to articulate, may be slightly better than others."

"As far as Indian music is concerned I wouldn't call myself a torchbearer. It's the media that focuses on it, like at one time Pandit Ravi Shankar was the poster boy of Indian music. It did not matter that there were equally good sitar players in India that time. Everybody talked about him and not others like Pandit Nikhil Banerjee or Ustad Ali Anwar Khan"

"You open London Times and you find reviews of Western classical music concerts finding pride of place even if the concerts themselves have less than 200 people in a hall meant for 1,500. They do this because they want to highlight what they see as their socio-cultural legacy."

"The social media is making conventional media obsolete. So its becoming necessary to hawk anything to keep going. I don’t blame the media. But where do you draw the line? Within the scheme of things, is it not possible to keep track of one’s responsibility and help nurture cultural legacy? How else will the coming generations know of our culture?"

"I remember I was once booed off the stage on day one of a festival at Nagpur within half an hour and the same audiences were eating off my hands the next within the first seven or eight minutes. Everyone has their bad day, if I didn’t I’d be God."

"I’d have to say that accompanying vocalists is tougher, especially if you are with artistes of the calibre of Pt Jasraj or Vidushi Kishori Amonkar. The first 45 minutes can be very involved, intense and slow. You have to concentrate and focus because when things are slow, each beat is magnified a thousand-fold. Even a small chisel at the end of beat stands out."

"I firmly believe that the primary role of the tabla is saath-sangat. Which is why I enjoy being on stage with Shivji (Pt Shivkumar Sharma), Amjadbhai (Amjad Ali Khan) or Birju Maharaj. I look forward to these concerts. Unlike a solo concert where I am my own boss, here I have to strike a dialogue in the music-making process. This enriches and makes me a better musician and tabla player."

"When I began there was an expectation that I play like Abbaji, but over the years luckily for me music lovers got around to accepting me for what I play... Look at others like Ustad Bismillah Khan’s son who has lost his way in trying to play shehnai like his father. Copying his father is one thing but taking his music forward is quite another."

"I’ve never wanted to fit in Abbaji’s shoes and am happy to walk in my own. My father made it categorically clear even when my brothers or me performed with him. “I don’t expect my sons to be me because what I’m doing is already done. They’ve to be better than me,” he’d say. “Photocopies are eventually consigned to the dust bin and only originals preserved."

"If it weren’t for the masters we wouldn’t have audiences for Indian classical music across the world. As for taking their mission forward, we have a long way to go."

"From being made to wait in the kitchen to becoming the cynosure of attention and interacting with the who’s who has been a big leap. Music is no longer something that ‘respectable people’ keep children away from. We’ve had corporate czars and barons like Arvind Parekh and Brijbhushan Kabra taking to music."

"As a child I remember accompanying Abbaji to private mehfils in the homes of the ‘beautiful people.’ While they wined and dined, musicians would wait in the kitchen and only come out when summoned. I personally remember bringing back large Tiffin carrier|tiffin carriers with left-over food as honorarium."

"I think that commercialization in the long run will not affect the integrity of the music. In every venture, musical or otherwise, you will always have good and bad. The same applies here."

"I usually do field work before I sit down to play with somebody; in other words I go listen to them play in a concert, listen to their music, tapes, whatever, so that when I sit down with them, I have a vague idea what their temperament is about and what kind of musical patterns they enjoy playing. Solo, I am the captain of the ship, and I decide what I will play and dictate the pace of the show."

"Every time you step out on to the stage, you learn something which helps you grow and be a better communicator. It’s not like you’re the master. You’re always a student."

"Every time I play with someone, just interacting with them points me to a different nook or a corner in my playing that I had overlooked."

"He did not even leave his favourite Banaras where the notes of his shehnai wafted across the Kashi Vishwanath and Sankat Mochan temples and intermingled with the placid waters of the Ganga,""

"He was the undisputed jewel in the crown of Indian music; one who will not be born in the next few centuries. He gave a new meaning to shehnai."

"I just acted in the role but Ustad Bismillah Khan is the real soul of the film. He gave life to the character I played in the film."

"Ustad Bismillah Khan’s specialization lies in his ability to produce intricate sound patterns on the Shehnai, which was hitherto, considered impossible on this instrument."

"These are the people who made the instrument become identified with them. If you said shehnai, you said Bismillah Khan. You did not say anybody else, it became synonymous."

"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."

"K.R .Narayan, former President of India quoted in"

"Khan saheb’s music has found its way, penetrating barriers of religion, caste and class, to the hearts of millions of our people, uniting them in a shared ecstasy....He has never accepted that there is any contradiction between music and his religious faith, rather he sees perfect unity , a connection between the two...."

"Sukriya. An image can never be the real thing. Varanasi is where the Ganga flows, where I can play the Shehnai for Lord Balaji. I shall be at home, nowhere else but in India."

"Tradition takes time to change. But it changes, all right. All that I have to do is to keep trying."

"I wish I could hold a concert....It is unfair that the Shehnai is not played at concerts. Why should not the Shehnai be played at the concerts?... Then let me do it now. Let me break tradition....May Lord Balaji help me."

"God knows no religion. God belongs to mankind. I realized this while playing at the Balaji temple."

"Allahee...Allah-hee... Allah-hee....I continued to raise the pitch. When I opened my eyes I asked them: Is this madness? I am calling the God. I am thinking of him. I am searching for Him. Why do you call my search chutiya?"

"If music is bad then why has it reached such heights? Why does music make me to soar towards heaven? The religion of music is one; all other are different. I tell the Mullas that this is the only haqeeqat (reality). This is my world. My Namaaz is the seven ‘sudh’ [pure] and five ‘komal’ [soft] surs."

"After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes , there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz. He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing."

"Music lets me forget bad experiences. You cannot keep ragas and regrets in your mind together."