At the Feet of the Master: Studying Music with Ali Akbar Kahn

From the Cowboy and the Yogi: Ideals shared by India and America

Complete book available at this Link

(This article appeared in India Currents, November, 1991. It was the first article that India Currents specifically commissioned me to write.)

Overlooking us all is a stained glass window of the goddess Saraswati, playing a Vina with two of her four hands, surrounded by photographs and drawings of venerable Indian musician-sages. The floor is covered with Sitars, Sarods, an occasional Esraj or Sarangi, sometimes even a western instrument or two — and a bewildering spiderweb of student-owned extension chords, tape recorders and microphones. The school sound system, with its two huge speakers and microphones for the teacher and his tabla player, looms over the sitting students as impressively as the images of Goddesses and Gurus. The sound of tuning strings reiterates like rainfall. When Ali Akbar Kahnsahib steps towards the front of the room, there is a respectful silence and everyone stands. When he sits on the low rug covered platform, everyone sits. He lights the first of many cigarettes, and someone brings him a cup of tea. And for the next two hours, he performs an act of musical virtuosity made no less remarkable by the fact that he has repeated it several times a week for over twenty…