Ustad Vilayat Khan

Vilayat Khan is widely regarded as the greatest sitarist of his age. Born in Gouripur, Mymensingh, in what was then East Bengal, he grew up in the Imdadkhani gharana, a family line of musicians stretching back to the Mughal era. Alongside Imdad Khan, Enayat Khan and Imrat Khan, he is credited with developing gayaki ang, which makes the sitar mimic the melisma of the human voice. He also invented a way of bending a note after the string was plucked, a technique that later influenced other players.

He recorded his first 78-RPM disc at eight, and a 1944 Mumbai concert drew the headline "Electrifying Sitar". After Indian independence he toured abroad, probably becoming the first Indian musician to play in England, in 1951. His score for Satyajit Ray's Jalsaghar (1958) won a silver medal at the 1959 Moscow International Film Festival, and he also scored Merchant-Ivory's The Guru (1969) and Kadambari (1976), which gave the young Kavita Krishnamurthy her first song. His last concert came in 2004, the year he died of lung cancer.