walking upstream…
Allauddin Khan
photo: prof. rafiqul islam · cc by 2.5 ↗Allauddin Khan
Ustad Allauddin Khan — known to his students as Baba — was a sarod virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist whose seven decades of teaching at the Maihar princely court founded the Maihar (Senia-Maihar) gharana and produced most of 20th-century Hindustani music's biggest names, including his son Ali Akbar Khan, daughter Annapurna Devi, and disciple Ravi Shankar. He arrived at that authority the hard way: a runaway at ten, he trained under a sequence of Calcutta teachers in vocal music, violin and multiple instruments before a chance encounter with a court sarod player redirected him toward the sarod, and finally, in his twenties, he earned acceptance as a disciple of Wazir Khan of Rampur, gaining access to the centuries-old Senia gharana descended from Tansen.
the sound in question
Sarod – Raga Hem (All India Radio recording)Allauddin Khan
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Wazir Khan1900s–10s · Dhrupad / Rudra veena / Hindustani classical
Wazir Khan, head of the Rampur court's music department and a descendant of Tansen's son-in-law Naubat Khan, took Allauddin on around 1905–1910 as, in his own words, his foremost disciple outside his family — passing on the full Senia-gharana vocabulary of rudra veena, sursingar and rabab technique, and the dhrupad/dhamar repertoire behind it.
listen: upstream & heresource: Indian Muslim Legends ↗
No known surviving recording — Senia-Rampur dhrupad / rudra veena repertoireWazir Khan
Sarod – Raga Kaushi BhairavAllauddin Khan
listen forNo Wazir Khan recording is known to survive, but his stamp is audible in how Allauddin's own alap in Raga Kaushi Bhairav unfolds — long, unmetered, built on veena-style meend (glides) rather than the faster, more ornamented khyal-vocal phrasing Allauddin trained in first.
Ahmed Ali Khan1880s–90s · Sarod / Hindustani classical
A sarod player at the court of Jagat Kishore Acharya, the zamindar of Muktagachha, Ahmed Ali Khan so impressed the young Allauddin at a performance that Allauddin became his student for about five years — the encounter that turned him from a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist toward the sarod, the instrument he would ultimately make his own before seeking out Wazir Khan for its deepest refinements.
listen: upstream & heresource: Indian Muslim Legends ↗
Sarod repertoire, Muktagachha court (unrecorded)Ahmed Ali Khan
Raag BasantAllauddin Khan
listen forNo recording of Ahmed Ali Khan is known to survive; what's audible instead is the result — by the time of his own AIR recordings (Raag Basant among them), Allauddin's touch on sarod is fully idiomatic to the instrument rather than borrowed from vocal or veena technique.
Nulo Gopal1870s–80s · Hindustani vocal / Khyal
Born Gopal Krishna Bhattacharya and known as Nulo Gopal, this working Calcutta vocal teacher took in the ten-year-old runaway Allauddin as a pupil around 1877 and drilled him in sargam and khyal for seven years, until his own death in a plague outbreak — the foundational vocal ear-training Allauddin carried into every instrument he later mastered.
listen: upstream & heresource: Indian Muslim Legends ↗
Khyal vocal instruction repertoire, Calcutta (unrecorded, pre-gramophone era)Nulo Gopal
Sarod – Raag Paraj BasantAllauddin Khan
listen forNo recording of Nulo Gopal survives from pre-gramophone Calcutta; listen instead for how vocal Allauddin's sarod phrasing stays even decades later — in Raag Paraj Basant the sarod bends and holds notes the way a khyal singer shapes a phrase, rather than favoring plucked ornamentation.