How a sixth-generation sarangi maestro honours his family’s centuries-old legacy

Like many gharanas with mofussil roots, classical music started leaving Moradabad in western Uttar Pradesh sometime at the turn of the last century. With centres of support for music dwindling, clans started branching out into metropolitan cities where new patrons and opportunities beckoned. Delhi, less than 200 km away, with its gleaming new arts institutions, its freshly minted akademis and radio station, was an attractive option.

Among the music migrants to the capital city in the mid-1960s was Ghulam Sabir Khan, a sarangiya of the Moradabad gharana and the son of the great Siddique Ahmad Khan, who descended from a long line of fabulous musicians. Today, this lineage has an address in a winding lane in Delhi’s eastern corner, just off the Yamuna, in Lakshmi Nagar – at the home of Ghulam Sabir Khan’s son. Murad Ali Khan is the sixth generation of hereditary sarangi players from Moradabad, now an ustad to the next line of musicians in the family.

You can hear the story of the gharana’s evolution in the sounds of the three exquisite sarangis dating back over a hundred years that sit in his home. They were made in Meerut – an important sarangi-making hub – and Badayun. Wrought from aged wood, embellished...

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