That voice, that singing, that genius

Possessing a great voice is different from one’s ability to sing greatly. Ustad Rashid Khan, who passed away in Kolkata on Tuesday at 55, possessed both gift of voice and genius for song. In the rarefied air of Hindustani music, Khan was the Renaissance Man, effortlessly moving from his Rampur-Sahaswan gharana waters – full-throated, slow-medium tempo intricacies – to khayals and taranas. His breathgiving voice is haunting in ‘Barsat Sawan’ from the 2019 Bengali film, Mitin Mashi. In an earlier rendition of Raag Desh, we are provided a glorious aural darshan of his exquisite ability and power to simultaneously gently hold down notes, fly them like fluttering kites, and even make them evaporate into the thin-made-thick air.

Khan was, in the truest sense, a modernist – using a ‘traditional’ form of music, and making it temporally not just relevant but seemingly a mandatory part of the zeitgeist. Bhimsen Joshi had pointed out that in singers like him, Hindustani music was secure. Perhaps of all the arts, great vocal music retains this quality of ‘aliveness’. In Khan’s rendition of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s immortal thumri, ‘Yaad Piya ki Aye’, he is majestic and vulnerable at the same time – making the emotion of pining float solely on the anti-gravity of his singing. In the raucousness of his death, his signature baritone suddenly fills the world.