Who is Ali Akbar Khan and what is sarod?
” The anecdote reflects unfairly on Menuhin, who was to become a true connoisseur, but it is remarkable that at a time when his passion for Indian music (and yoga) was only in its infancy he was already its highest profile authority in the West – a situation that speaks volumes about how different things were then. The pioneers of 1955-56 had some forerunners. Hazrat Inayat Khan gave concerts in the US and Europe as early as 1911, but he was better known as a proponent of Sufism; as a musician he fell short of the highest standard. Then, in the 1930s, an acclaimed troupe of Indian dancers and musicians led by Uday Shankar, elder brother of Ravi (who was there as a teenage dancer), were presented in major Western theatres. The troupe even recorded an album in the US in 1937. But it was not until the 1950s that leading classical musicians from India started to appear in the West as soloists. The first was probably Vilayat Khan, the only sitar player to rival Shankar’s prestige in India,
