Patiala gharana

The Patiala gharana is a khayal, thumri and ghazal lineage that grew out of the Punjab court of Patiala in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is usually described less as a single family style than as a meeting point of several traditions — Delhi, Gwalior, Jaipur and the folk idioms of Punjab — and it is one of the few gharanas with a large body of practitioners on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. Because its dominant twentieth-century line came from Kasur in present-day Pakistan, the tradition is now frequently called the Kasur-Patiala gharana.

The tradition begins with the patronage of Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala (r. 1813-1845), who appointed Miyan Ditte Khan as court musician. Ditte Khan's son Miyan Kallu Khan — also written Kalu Miyan Khan, a sarangi player trained by Qutub Bakhsh 'Tanras' Khan of the Delhi gharana, himself a court musician of Bahadur Shah Zafar — is generally named as the founder of the gharana.

The style was carried to national attention by the next generation: Kallu Khan's son Ali Baksh Khan and his companion Fateh Ali Khan, court musicians under Maharaja Rajinder Singh. The 9th Earl of Elgin is said to have conferred on them the titles 'General' and 'Colonel', which survive in Punjabi as Jarnail and Karnail, and their partnership is still remembered as Aliya-Fattu. Sources differ on their exact relationship: Fateh Ali is described in some accounts as Ali Baksh's close friend and in others as his cousin. Both are documented as having also trained with Goki Bai, a woman vocalist of the Jaipur gharana and a student of Behram Khan of the Dagar dhrupad family — a detail often left out of shorter accounts.

In the twentieth century the gharana split into two well-known strands. One runs through the brothers Amanat Ali Khan (1922-1974) and Bade Fateh Ali Khan (1935-2017); the other, from Kasur, through Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (1902-1968) and his brother Barkat Ali Khan (1907-1963). Bade Ghulam Ali Khan is the exponent most closely identified with the gharana in the popular imagination, and his recordings shaped how Patiala singing is heard today.

Patiala singing is deliberately eclectic, borrowing phrases and devices from other gharanas and absorbing the Punjabi tappa and the Sindhi kafi into khayal. The voice is produced from the chest and diaphragm rather than the head, giving an open, strong tone used across three octaves.

The tradition is known above all for its taans — rapid melodic runs that are rhythmic, often vakra (crooked, non-linear) and firat, and not strictly tied to the rhythmic cycle. Ornament is dense: long meend (glides between notes), heavy gamak (oscillation), murki and harkat (small rapid turns), and a large stock of bandishes (fixed compositions that summarise a raga). Pentatonic ragas such as Malkauns suit this ornamental approach, and Darbari Kanada, Ramkali, Shuddha Kalyan and Bageshree are also closely associated with the gharana; ektaal and teentaal are its usual rhythmic cycles. Alongside khayal, Patiala musicians are strongly identified with thumri, tappa and ghazal — Ali Baksh and Fateh Ali's own thumri compositions set swift taans in the Punjabi tappa idiom.