Ustad Imrat Khan (17 November 1935 - 22 November 2018), commonly known as Imrat Khan was an Indian sitar and surbahar player and composer. Ustād (abbreviated as Ust., Ut. or Ud.; from Persian استاد) is an honorific title for a man used in the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is used in various languages of the Muslim World, including Persian, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Pashto, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay and Kurdish.
Imrat was the younger brother of sitar maestro Vilayat Khan. Khan was born in Calcutta, India into a family of musicians tracing its pedigree back for several generations, to the court musicians of the Mughal rulers. His father was Enayat Khan, recognised as a leading sitar and surbahar player of his time, as had been his grandfather, Imdad Khan before him. His father died when Imrat was a child, so he was raised by his mother, Bashiran Begum and her father, singer Bande Hassan Khan. In 1944, the family moved with Vilayat Khan, Imrat's elder brother, to Bombay where both the brothers learned extensively from uncle Wahid Khan. In 1952 Vilayat and Imrat moved in together in Calcutta. They performed together for many years. From the 1960s onwards, Khan performed and recorded solo, playing both sitar and surbahar.
Links to Peel[]
During the late 60's, classical Indian music started to gain popularity in the west, especially among the hippie movement, which Peel was a follower of. George Harrison's use of Indian classical instruments, especially the sitar, on some Beatles tracks was later copied by other artists, folk guitarists like Davy Graham, Robin Williamson and Andy Roberts experimented with Eastern tunings and scales, and groups like the Butterfield Blues Band ("East-West") and Country Joe & The Fish ("Eastern Jam") played extended "raga-rock" instrumentals. Peel responded to this trend by playing many classical Indian tracks, including some by Ravi Shankar and Imrat & Vilayat Khan, mostly on Night Ride and usually faded early, because Indian ragas were usually too long for a 55-minute radio show..
On the Night Ride of 27 March 1968, Peel mentioned seeing “an amazing concert at the Festival Hall last week in which a gentleman played a surbahar” - the gentleman in question being Imrat Khan. Peel was intrigued by the surbahar, an instrument less familiar to Western listeners than the sitar, which by then was being used as a fashionable accessory on many pop records, and played a BBC archive track featuring it. Later, he had both Imrat and his brother Vilayat record sessions for Top Gear and played their long classical pieces in full - although producer John Walters, who backed Peel in his decision to book the brothers Khan, later recalled that Imrat's music, broadcast on a Saturday afternoon Top Gear, drew complaints from workers in a factory where Radio 1 was used to provide background music. In 1971 Imrat Khan was the first Indian musician to play at the Proms[1]. By the middle of the 1970's, however, classical Indian music had gone out of fashion in the pop industry, even if artists like Imrat and Vilayat Khan continued to perform to concert hall audiences, and for much of his later career Peel rarely played Indian or Indian-influenced music.
Sessions[]
1. Recorded: 1969-07-01. Broadcast: 06 July 1969. Repeated: 31 August 1969
- Kalarati / Tori
2. Recorded: 1970-04-14. Broadcast: 18 April 1970.
- Bihag / Aheer Bnaero
Other Shows Played[]
- None, according to available playlist