Ustad Bande Ali Khan

Bande Ali Khan was born in the North-Western Provinces around 1830; his family is said to have come from the Saharanpur district, while the Kirana gharana takes its name from Kairana, given as his birthplace. He was the son of a musician of the Saharanpur line, named in sources as Ghulam Zakir Khan or Sadiq Ali Khan, and also received training from Baba Behram Khan of the Dagar bani.

He served at the courts of Gwalior and Indore, where writers record that musicians around him absorbed his aesthetics, and he later settled at Pune, where he died. His approach to the veena - playing an instrumental line modelled on singing, the gayaki ang - is credited with influencing both instrumentalists and vocalists of the following generation.

Accounts differ on the shape of his legacy. The Kirana gharana is described as coalescing around his standing at the Gwalior and Indore courts in the mid-nineteenth century, with his relatives Abdul Karim Khan and Abdul Wahid Khan later making the name a singing tradition; other accounts name him as founder of the Indore beenkar gharana. He is reported to have taught few musicians directly, and claims of discipleship come from several different gharanas. This page treats these as competing accounts rather than settled fact.

Dates given for him vary between sources: c. 1830 to c. 1896 in one, 1830 to 1890 in another, and 1826 to 1890 elsewhere. His exact relationship to Behram Khan is also reported inconsistently - variously as Behram Khan's sister's husband or his mother's brother.

His playing is described as gayaki ang - a veena line shaped after the phrasing of the voice - and it is on this basis that later vocalists as well as instrumentalists claimed his influence. Shamsuddin Faridi Desai is named in reference works as a modern exponent of his style.