While Ustad Fateh Ali Khan provided the sound architectural foundation in their Khayal renditions, Ustad Amanat Ali Khan’s melodic ornamentation brought the ragas to climax with culmination in fast-paced taranas in which the former exhibited his genius with matchless gamakas and the latter with the progressive intensification of tana in some of the richest pieces of the Hindustani classical music. The Amanat Ali-Fateh Ali duo, as they came to be known, were arguably the best classical vocalist twosome that Pakistan has had in that it was a pairing of equals who complemented each other. Credit: Michael Foley/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) While Ustad Fateh Ali Khan received his musical education from his father Akhtar Hussain Khan, he was immensely impressed by Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan’s style, a colorful dervish maestro, who was the son of ‘Colonel’ Fateh Ali Khan and was another great exponent of the Patiala gharana of the 20th century. Ustad Fateh Ali Khan was named after his grandfather’s friend and singing partner, ‘Colonel’ Fateh Ali Khan. The titles general and colonel of music were bestowed upon the virtuosos by the British viceroy victor Alexander Bruce, the ninth Earl of Elgin after they had enthralled him with their performance.The dynamic duo was called ‘Aliya-Phattu ki jodi’ and trained with Tanras Khan.
Mian Kallu became the court musician to the Maharaja of Patiala and the mantle was later passed on to his son, ‘General’ Ali Baksh Khan, who performed in a duo with his friend ‘Colonel’ Fateh Ali Khan. According to Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, the Patiala gharana was founded in the mid to the late 19th century by his great-grandfather Mian Kallu who had received training from the last Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar’s court musician Mir Qutub Bakhsh ‘Tanras’ Khan. Ustad Fateh Ali Khan was born in Patiala in 1935 to Akhtar Hussain Khan, who himself was an accomplished musician. Not only did he preserve the aesthetic and style of the Patiala gharana, but he also maintained its preeminence in Pakistan and around the world.
In a country where the connoisseurs of classical music are dwindling in numbers, and the popular taste and demand for the genre has been on a steady decline, Khan kept the flame of his art alive with a robust vigour and peerless flair. He may have once been associated with the Maharaja of Patiala’s court, but truly he was the undisputed emperor of his music kingdom. For nearly half a century, he was the patriarch of the Patiala gharana – one of the six original stylistic schools or lineages – of the Khayal genre of the Indian classical music. Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, the foremost exponent of the Hindustani classical music in Pakistan, is no more.
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