Amir Khan

Amir Khan was born into a family of musicians at Kalanaur in August 1912. His father, Shahmir Khan, a sarangi and veena player of the Bhendibazaar gharana, served at the Holkar court of Indore; his grandfather, Change Khan, had been a singer at the Mughal court. He was first trained on the sarangi by his father, who, seeing the boy's interest in singing, gradually turned the lessons towards vocal music and the merukhand technique. Musicians visiting Indore gathered at the family house, and he heard many styles from an early age.

He moved to Bombay in 1934 and recorded a handful of 78-rpm discs, which were not well received. On his father's advice he joined the court of Maharaja Chakradhar Singh of Raigarh in 1936, staying about a year. He later lived in Delhi and Calcutta before returning to Bombay after Partition.

Beyond the concert platform he sang classical pieces for films, most notably Baiju Bawra, Shabaab and Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje, which widened his audience considerably. He also studied the language of the tarana, tracing its syllables to Persian and Arabic words.

He died in a car accident in Calcutta on 13 February 1974, aged sixty-one.

Sources disagree about his dates. Wikipedia gives 15 August 1912 at Kalanaur; Susheela Misra, in the account reproduced in the Rajan Parrikar Music Archive, gives April 1912. The same archive and some discographies head his entry 1912–1973, while Wikipedia and Misra's own text both place his death on 13 February 1974, in a car accident in Calcutta. Both readings are recorded here rather than one being chosen.

Besides his father, three musicians are repeatedly named as shaping his style: Rajab Ali Khan for ghamak patterns, Aman Ali Khan of Bhendibazaar for sargam and merukhand, and Abdul Wahid Khan for the very slow tempo he made his own. He sang and composed under the pen-name Sur Rang. He was given the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1967 and both the Padma Bhushan and the Presidential Award in 1971. His younger brother Bashir was a sarangi player at the Indore station of All India Radio.

His gayaki drew on the slow tempo of Abdul Waheed Khan, the taans of Rajab Ali Khan and the merukhand of Aman Ali Khan. It kept the unhurried development and restraint of dhrupad while holding to the poetry of khyal: very slow badhat, bol-alap with merukhandi patterns, sargam and bol-taans of unusual movement, and a closing chhota khyal or ruba'idar tarana. He usually sang with only tanpura and tabla, asking for a plain theka, and composed under the pen-name "Sur Rang".