Ustad Abdul Latif Khan, of Pari Bazaar, Bhopal

Raga Miyan ki Malhar

Raga Lalit

Ustad Abdul Latif Khan, who died last year, was one of the best-loved characters on the Bhopali music scene and was widely regarded as India's foremost exponent of the sarangi.

Ustad was born into a family of musicians steeped in the traditions of the famous Gwalior gharana (or "house") of classical Khayal singing. His musical training began as a child, when he began learning vocal music from his grandfather Haidar Khan and his father, Chhote Khan. His uncles, Uday Khan and Haddu Khan also instructed him in music.He studied many instruments, among them sitar, santoor and tabla and by the end of his life was an expert performer on twenty different musical instruments.

Ustad's great love was however the sarangi, which he mastered under the great Bade Ghulam Sabir Khan.

The sarangi, a bowed fiddle, in expressiveness is the closest Indian instrument to the human voice and in the hands of Ustad, with his training in vocal music, the instrument became a singer.

His performances have done much to establish the sarangi as one of the great solo instruments of the Indian classical repertoire, and rescued it from the stigma it once bore, of being an instrument meant merely to accompany dancing girls.

Ustad was in demand at the most prestigious music festivals all over India, both as a soloist and accompanying such maestros as Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Hirabai Barodekar, Nazakat and Salamat Ali Khan, Mallikarjun Mansur and Kishori Amonkar. He received many awards, among them the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992.

In 1989 he performed at the Sarangi Mela in Bhopal, an impressive get-together of more than 120 sarangi players. Ustad lived in the city's Pari Bazaar area, where he presided over an enormous household of sons, daughters, their spouses and children in a house full of music where everyone played an instrument.

He was a great friend to the Sambhavna Clinic, which is funded by the Bhopal Medical Appeal, and was himself a gas victim.

On the night of horror, when gas began to seep into the family house and people wanted to run away into the street, Ustad forbade it, saying that if they were to die, they would die with dignity, all together. Instead they blocked doors and windows and stayed indoors. With this decision, Ustad saved his family, for all those who ran into the streets were enveloped by the oncoming gas clouds and perished.