Ustad Akram Khan

Mohammad Akram Khan was born in 1965 into the Ajrara tabla family. His father was Ustad Hashmat Ali Khan, and he counts himself the seventh generation of the gharana. He began learning at eleven, first under his great-grandfather Ustad Mohammad Shafi Khan, then under Ustad Niazu Khan, and continued under his father.

Alongside the family training he took formal qualifications — Sangeet Visharad at Chandigarh in 1984 and Sangeet Praveen from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad, in 1988, with a commerce degree from Meerut in between. He is a Top Grade artist of All India Radio, New Delhi.

He gave his first concert at seventeen in Lucknow and first played abroad in Norway in 1987, at twenty-two. In the same year he performed with Ustad Vilayat Khan in Japan and accompanied the sitar player again in the United States in 1992; he has played at the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. He teaches from a studio in Laxmi Nagar, Delhi, runs a tabla academy, and gives workshops and masterclasses — including one at Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth in March 2024 devoted specifically to Ajrara technique and history. His own account places more than fifteen Ajrara qaidas in his active repertoire; he is teaching the style to his son Zargham.

He is not the Akram Khan known as a contemporary dancer and choreographer; they are different people.

With his father he founded the Tabla Academy of Ajrada Gharana in Delhi, which teaches in the guru–shishya manner; by his own count more than a thousand students have passed through it. He is graded Outstanding by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and in 1993–94 he was a visiting lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, Seattle; he has also given lecture-demonstrations at the University of British Columbia and in Oslo.

He has played four times inside the Parliament of India — twice with Pandit Debu Chaudhuri, once with Pandit Jasraj and once with Pandits Rajan and Sajan Mishra — and at Hyderabad House, New Delhi, during a visit by Chancellor Angela Merkel. As an accompanist he has played with Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pandit Birju Maharaj, Pandit Ram Narayan, Vidushi Girija Devi, Ustad Sultan Khan and Dr N. Rajam, among many others, and he is regularly heard as a soloist.

His honours include the Delhi Ratan award (2006), the Uttar Pradesh Sangeet Natak Akademi award (2013), the Taal Samrat award of Pracheen Kala Kendra, Chandigarh (2015), the Hanumant Lifetime Achievement award presented by Morari Bapu at Mahuva (2022) and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Samman (2023). His recordings are held by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi.

Ajrara playing is closed and rim-led, and Akram Khan's recitals are built around the gharana's qaidas rather than around speed. The things to listen for are the triplet pulse inside the phrase, which gives the bols a rolling rather than even feel, and the bayan work — pressure shifted mid-stroke so the bass pitch slides. In accompaniment he describes his approach as conversation with the soloist, answering phrases rather than laying a grid under them.