Enayat Khan

, one of the topmost sitariyas of the postwar period.

Enayat Khan was born in Uttar Pradesh into a family of musicians.ref|Rajput His father was sitar great Imdad Khan, who taught him the sitar and surbahar (bass sitar) in the family style, known as the Imdadkhani Gharana or Etawah Gharana (school), after a village outside Agra where Imdad once lived. He married Basiran Bibi, daughter of khyal singer Bande Hussain, and settled with his family in Calcutta, where, though he only lived to 43, he did much pioneering work on the sitar. For example, he standardised its physical dimensions and added the upper resonator gourd, which is very popular with today's players (though his own descendants have not kept using it). In a place rapidly developing into an important North Indian centre of the arts, at a time where interest in national culture was strong fuelled by the struggle for independence, he brought sitar music out from its narrow connoisseur circles to new mass audiences. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore was a musical collaborator and personal friend. Some of Enayat Khan's recordings have been released on CD, on the "Great Gharanas: Imdadkhani" compilation in RPG/EMI's "Chairman's Choice" series.

Enayat died young, with four children. His two sons, Vilayat and Imrat, were trained in the Imdadkhani style by other members of his extended family. Vilayat learned the sitar and Imrat the surbahar; both were to become very famous classical musicians.

Footnote

Before conversion, the family had been of Rajput lineage, and in an informal continuation of that tradition, Enayat Khan also had the Hindu name of Nath Singh. (Deepak Raja, booklet for Ulhas Kashalkar's "Tribute to Vilayat Khan" CD (India Archive Music IAMCD 1071, 2003), page 21.)