Mushtaq Ali Khan - Training and Lineage

Training and Lineage

Khan started his instruction at the age of 6. He learned from his father, Ashiq Ali Khan, who had learned sitar from the renowned 19th century player Barkatullah Khan, a descendant of Masit Sen of Delhi, the inventor of the Masitkhani gat (the major style of slow musical composition in sitar playing) His name became synonymous with the Senia style although he may actually have practiced an even more austere style than his predecessors in the gharana. He eschewed much of the ornamentation of modern sitar technique (such as murkhi and zamzama), and embraced a clean, pure sound. His alap was constructed along the lines of a dhrupad alap, and his jod and jhalla derived a lot from been (rudra vina) technique. Oddly enough, in spite of being a musical descendant of Masit Sen, he rarely played Masitkhani gats in public, and none of the commercially available examples of his music includes one. He opted to play the faster Rezakhani gats instead, feeling that playing Masitkhani gats to an undiscerning audience would cause them to be devalued.