It was way back in 2005 that I received an invitation to listen to the Kolkata-based vocalist Ustad Raza Ali Khan at a concert organised by the Karachi chapter of All Pakistan Music Conference (APMC). What attracted most classical music enthusiasts to the event were the singer’s ancestral credentials. He is the son of the late Ustad Munawwar Ali Khan and, more importantly, the grandson of the legendary Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. At that concert, he rendered the khayal and thumri of his grandfather faithfully.

But last week when I got to listen to him I felt that the Ustad has matured considerably. In other words, he has built his own repertoire. The concert took place at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture where he sang classical and semi-classical numbers with aplomb, winning applause from the small but highly appreciative audience. He was accompanied by three brilliant instrumentalists — Sajid Ali the tabla nawaz from Lahore, the Karachi-based Ustad Akhtar Husain on the harmonium and his brilliant son Gul Mohammad Khan on the sarangi. It felt as if the three instrumentalists had been accompanying Ustad Raza Ali Khan for ages.

Earlier that day I got to meet Ustad Raza Ali Khan in the house of Ayela Raza, the director of the APMC. He is a lively conversationalist and doesn’t get upset with difficult questions.

Ustad Raza Ali Khan is a classical singer of high merit. The Indian vocalist is the grandson of the legendary Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, but has successfully carved his own niche in the field of eastern classical music. Last week, the Ustad returned to Karachi, where he was born, for a concert

“You seem to be too much into teaching of classical and semi-classical music, which is perhaps why you don’t perform as often as many of your contemporaries, such as Ustad Rashid Khan,” I said to him. It is a comment not easy to respond to.

But Raza did, claiming that most of his performances are outside India, which is why one doesn’t get to know about them. As for his pupils, Ayela Raza interjected to say that at least three of them — Ronita De, Shomi Majumdar and Aditi Chatterjee — are simply brilliant. Their performances on YouTube, which I discovered later, speak highly of their mentor’s teaching skills. This is not, of course, to deny their own passion for the performing art.

Coming to Karachi is like homecoming for the Ustad, who was born in the city in 1962. His maternal grandfather, a railway employee, had been transferred to what was then a sleepy town in 1962. His mother, as happens quite often, felt more at ease in her parents’ home in the final stage of her pregnancy.

The family was in Lahore at the time of Partition, a city close to their ancestral town of Kasur, but in 1957 migrated to India where the pastures were greener and there was, and indeed still is, a greater appreciation of classical music. Those days even stalwarts like Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan were called mirasis (a derogatory term for singers) in our part of the subcontinent, while in India everyone from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to matinee idol Dilip Kumar held him in high esteem.

While the gharana (school of classical music) to which Ustad Raza belongs to is widely known as Kasur-Patiala gharana, he vehemently disputes the word Patiala. When asked to point out the salient features of his own gharana, he says that, to begin with, the renditions are characterised by what can be called ‘full-throated ease’. There is no nasal sound in the rendition, which is notable for an ‘unimpeded flow of voice’. Also the words are pronounced correctly. What is no less important, he adds, is that the taans (improvised musical phrases) are short and aesthetic. Listening to him at the APMC concert I found all the qualities very much present in his renditions, not only in classical but also in semi-classical numbers such as thumri, dadra and chaiti.

As one who visits Pakistan — Lahore in particular — quite often, he is familiar with the classical music scene in this country but avoids mentioning who his favourite vocalists and instrumentalists are in Pakistan.

“What about Abida Perveen?” I asked him.

“Kya kehne [words can’t describe her greatness],” is all I could draw out from him.

Raza lamented that on this trip he didn’t get to meet the greatest ghazal singer of our times. “The one and only Mehdi Hasan Saheb,” says the Ustad eulogising the late master, who passed away in 2012. Raza too sings ghazals based on ragas with ease.

“Music has no boundaries, more so in our part of the world, but what a pity we don’t have many concerts featuring singers and instrumentalists from across the border and vice versa,” the Ustad told me ruefully. “It’s not like cricket or hockey where the matches between the two countries create a spirit of unhealthy competition.”

A winner of the Master of Khayal Gayeki award from the Indira Gandhi National University, Ustad Raza told me the only reward he really craves is the applause that he gets from the listeners at concerts. He would have been happy after his concert that night.

Published in Dawn, ICON, December 31st, 2017