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Artist
Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan
12+ albums
Indianindian classicalHindustani classical music
about
Ustad Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan (August 15, 1928 - January 4, 2017) was an Indian sitar player. Khan received the national awards Padma Shri (1970) and Padma Bhushan (2006) and was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1987). Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan is regarded as one of the 'Sitar Trinity' of India along with Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan and is the youngest of them. He was born in 1928, in Jawra, Madhya Pradesh as the son of Jaffer Khan, a versatile vocalist, sitarist and beenkar. He hails from the Beenkar Gharana of Indore. He has been a distinguished All India Radio Artiste since the early 1940s. A few years before the Beatles met Ravi Shankar, in 1958, Khan collaborated with jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck. Brubeck who was in Bombay through the US State Department sponsored Jazz Ambassadors Program was impressed by the improvisation in Indian music and said that the experience accompanying Halim Jaffer Khan led him to play in a different way. Brubeck says of that meeting, "We understood each other." Khan also performed with the noted English classical guitarist Julian Bream in 1963. Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan is perhaps best known for his innovation, Jafferkhani Baaj. He describes it as, "a synthesis of precision in technique, systematic thought" with a vigorous playing style. Cultural anthropologist and reader at the University of Mumbai, Dr. Kamala Ganesh states: "His music making is full of eclectic yet deeply informed choices. He is a thinking musician but put
