Aaker Patel: Saving our music

Bade Ghulam Ali Khan of Kasur fled to India and became a citizen in 1958 because Pakistanis had little interest in music. Nehru requested him to move and Morarjibhai Desai gave him a bungalow in South Bombay, but what really convinced him was the audience.

While the Muslim is an equal — some might say superior — exponent of Hindustani music, its patron is the Hindu. Without the middle-class, upper-caste urban Hindu, Hindustani music in India would be in the same shape it is in Pakistan today.

In cities across India each weekend, concert halls are filled up by clerks, managers, accountants, housewives, retirees and students who will use public transport to listen to Khayal or Dhrupad or Carnatic.

Even lectures on Hindustani music get an audience on a Sunday morning. These are held in Bombay in places like Sri Shanmukhananda Hall or the Karnataka Sangha in Matunga, a Brahmin stronghold. Shanmukhananda (www.shanmukhanada.org.in) is where Zakir Hussain holds his annual concert on February 3 commemorating the barsi of his father, Allah Rakha.