The Sixth String Of Vilayat Khan
Everyone knows Vilayat Khan, but no one knows Vilayat Khan. In this beautifully layered biography, Namita Devidayal presents the ustad: vivid, volatile, bitingly funny, and also the sensitive, meditative, mindful man who produced music that contained the ecstasy of 'fairies dancing, elephants walking'. From Gowripur in Bangladesh to the Park Circus house, the glory of Dada Imdad, Bengal ka Jadugar Abba Enayat Khan's untimely death that left him orphaned at ten, the extreme penury, and then the peaks in Bombay and else-where - a life full of glamour and glitches - but always the music, unharmed, protected, at the centre. It is all here, an absolute feat of research.
