Ustad Munnu Khan

The Delhi lineage traces itself to Sudhar Khan Dhari in the early eighteenth century, and is widely regarded as the oldest continuous tabla tradition. Munnu Khan stood in its senior line: his father was Chote Khan, his elder brother was Ustad Gamay Khan (1883–1958), and his nephew was Ustad Inam Ali Khan (1924–1990), who served as khalifa — the acknowledged head of the gharana. After Inam Ali Khan's death Munnu Khan is described in turn as khalifa.

Much of what is reliably known about the Delhi gharana's family tree comes through him. James Kippen, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto, collected the lineage in the early 1980s from Inam Ali Khan and from Munnu Khan, recording interviews with them in Delhi in April 1984, and worked from a genealogy written in Urdu that he was able to read directly. Kippen is candid that any such genealogy is partly selective — he calls the effect "structural amnesia", the quiet dropping of branches that no longer explain the present — and this archive records his account as the testimony of named informants rather than as documentary proof.

As a teacher Munnu Khan is named in the training of Ustad Latif Ahmed Khan, the leading Delhi tabla player of the following generation, and of Latif Ahmed Khan's son Babar Latif, who studied with him as khalifa after his father's death. His playing itself is very sparsely documented: no commercially issued recordings have been located, and his standing in the tradition rests on his position in the family, his teaching, and the knowledge he transmitted.

One photograph of him has survived into public view: the ganda-bandhan of the boy Babar Latif, Latif Ahmed Khan's son, in which Munnu Khan ties the ceremonial thread that binds a pupil to a teacher. It was placed online by Babar Latif himself. Outside the archive he is also named as a teacher of the sitar player Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, who took tabla lessons from him for several years, and of the Delhi-trained tabla player Ustad Anthony Dass, who called Munnu Khan, Gamay Khan and Inam Ali Khan the three pillars of the gharana.

Delhi baj: the closed, two-finger technique (do ungliyon ka baaj) built on fine, even phrasing at the kinar rather than the open resonant strokes of the eastern gharanas.