Nissar Hussain Khan

Nissar Hussain Khan was the son and disciple of Fida Hussain Khan, and stood in the direct line of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana — a khayal tradition centred on the Uttar Pradesh towns of Rampur and Sahaswan and founded by Inayat Hussain Khan (1849–1919), to whom his family was related. He gave his first performance at eleven and received a scholarship from the Maharaja of Baroda, who also appointed his father a court musician so the boy's training could continue. At about eighteen he was himself appointed a court musician to Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, a position he held for close to three decades.

By the 1940s he was established on the Indian concert circuit and broadcast regularly on All India Radio; a run of 78rpm discs for His Master's Voice from around 1938 documents his repertoire, most of them pairing a khayal with a tarana — Todi with a Jaunpuri tarana, Kedar with a Bhairavi tarana, Puriya Dhanashri with Desh, Multani with Miyan ki Malhar.

He spent his last years at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Calcutta as a guru, and it is as a teacher that his influence is most directly audible today. He trained his grandnephew Ustad Rashid Khan in the traditional manner, first at his own home in Badaun and then at the Academy; his cousin Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan also studied with him. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1970, the Padma Bhushan (1971 in most accounts, 1970 in the Rajan Parrikar Music Archive) and the Tansen Award of the Government of Madhya Pradesh. He died on 16 July 1993.

A large inherited repertoire of well-known and obscure compositions, delivered in a rich, resonant voice, with gamaks, bol-taans and sargams worked into the raga exposition. He was admired above all as a singer of tarana — the fast form built on rhythmic, non-lexical syllables — and for his control of layakari and bol-bant.