Gharana

The Maihar gharana is a gharana or school of Hindustani or North Indian classical music formed principally by the sarod maestro Ustad Allaudin Khan in Maihar in the Madhya Pradesh state of India.

Ustad Allaudin Khan, profoundly known as “Baba” founded this gharana. He was a disciple of Ustad Wazir Khan (Rampur Gharana).
It is one of the most prominent gharanas of the 20th century; much of the fame of Hindustani classical music in the west stems from this gharana

Ustad Allauddin Khan has been hailed as probably one of the greatest muscians world could ever see. He was extremely blessed and could play many instruments, justifying each of them properly. However in his later years he concentrated primarily on Sarod and Violin.

Maihar derives a lot of influence from Dhrupad. The Maihar Gharana uses different techniques such as Ladi (chain), where quick tremolo strokes are played, for sustaining the notes in the Jod section and Tar- Paran, where the strokes of the Pakhawaj are imitated. The Chikari sound, which is prominent in the Imdadkhani style, is absent in the Maihar style. This Gharana uses the second, third and fourth strings too, in a ‘Raga’, giving it different sounds. The techniques used, are Meend, Gamak, Zamzama, Sparsh and Krintan and the Taans used are the Phirat, Diri-Diri and Gamak style Taans.

Maihar is probably one of those few gharanas wherein the transition from one generation to ther has not necessarily been through family members only and has been infact been more through Guru-Shishya parampara only. Prominent musicians belonging to the Maihar gharana include sitarists Pandit Ravi Shankar and late Nikhil Banerjee, Allauddin Khan’s son, sarod player late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan daughter Annapurna Devi and grandsons Aashish Khan and late Dhyanesh Khan. Other prominent musicians with links to this gharana include the sarodiya late Bahadur Khan, Pandit Jotin Bhattacharya, Tarun Bhattacharya, Indranil Bhattacharya, Alam Khan, Sharan Rani, late Vasant Rai, Rajeev Taranath , violinist late Pandit Vishnu Govind Jog guitarists Brij Bhushan Kabra, Debasis Chakroborty, Debashish Bhattacharya, Barun Kumar Pal, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and his nephew Krishna Bhatt, Vijay Raj Singh, flautists Pannalal Ghosh, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityanand Haldipur, Ronu Majumdar, sitarists Chandrakant sardeshmukh, Kartick Kumar and his son Niladri Kumar, Jaya Biswas, Indrajit Banerjee(Rajesh Khan)(sarod) and countless others.