I met Ustan Salamat Ali Khan in Virginia; he was on a US tour, and took a night off to give a house concert with his sons at the home of Afghan friends.
His ancestors were court musicians for the 16th century Moghul emperor Akbar. Khansahib’s family lived in Lahore, (Punjab) Pakistan following partition; Lahore was once the capital of the Moghul empire. When he sang with his brother, Nazakat Ali Khan, they were one of the greatest singing duos of the classical Hindustani genre. The Pakistani vocalists, i.e. those who found themselves on the Pakistan side of India after partition, never enjoyed the quality of support that the Indian classical musicians received, either from private patrons or the state.
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan’s singing style, called Dhrupad, is closest to free jazz and scat in the west. The gharana or school from which Khansahib’s singing derived its particular flavor and character, is Sham Chaurasia, a cluster of villages in Punjab. I remember we were driving in Queens, NY, listening to an improvised jazz melody on the car radio, and he and his sons were able to deconstruct the rhythm in less than one minute. While classical Indian music can sound very free, it’s actually rigorous in form, and uses highly complex, mathematical rhythmic cycles that are alluring but impenetrable to the western ear. It takes decades of practice to achieve a sound that sounds completely free. (1934 — 2001)