With the Passing of Ustad Iqbal Ahmed, The Voice of a City That Once Was Has Been Extinguished

Growing up in the Delhi of the 1960s and ’70s, Ustad Iqbal Ahmed was one of my earliest musician friends in the city.

I must have been 16 or 17 when we first met. He was just two years older. At the time of his sudden and untimely death last week, Iqbal bhai was the Khalifa or the head of the Dilli Gharana (extended family line) of Hindustani classical music. 

When we were young, his elders in the family comprised vocalists like Taan Samrat Ustad Nasir Ahmed and Ustad Hilal Ahmed as well as Ustad Zahoor Ahmed, a violinist with the All India Radio. Beside them were a number of masters of the tabla, the brightest star among whom was Ustad Lateef Ahmed Khan and later Ustad Shafat Ahmed, who was our age.

Delhi had been a centre of vocal music and tabla playing for several centuries. Iqbal bhai and his family represented a tenuous link with that hoary past.

The head of this extended clan at that time was Iqbal bhai’s maternal grandfather Ustad Chand Khan. Before Independence, Ustad Chand Khan had been a court singer at Patiala, as had his grandfather Ustad Mamman (Ghulam Mohammed) Khan, a sarangi ustad.

Iqbal bhai and the many inter-connected families of vocalists, sitar players, sarangi players and tabla players inhabited their ancestral houses, including the famous Mausiqui Manzil in the mohulla Suinwalan in old Delhi. Iqbal bhai had been trained by Ustad Chand Khan and many elders of the family. Chand Khan saheb had taught many other worthy pupils including Iqbal Bano who later migrated to Pakistan and immortalised Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s anthem to revolution, Hum Dekhenge. 

Also read: Why the Controversy Around Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ Is So Fatuous

Iqbal Ahmed had a vast repertoire of many types of classical, semi-classical and folk songs. From popular qawwali songs to khayal, thumri and ghazal, his knowledge was vast. Apart from these, he knew the various mauke ke gaane or songs to be sung on particular seasons or occasions like birth of a child, weddings, partings and so on.

Through his music he connected to the complex web of musical traditions that historically evolved in the city of Delhi from the time of Amir Khusrau in the 13th century. He was deeply devoted to the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and sang regularly at the annual Urs of both Nizamuddin Auliya and his brilliant devotee Amir Khusrau. He would sing the songs composed by Khusrau in different dialects of Hindi and in Indian Persian (sabq e Hindi). This is also a tradition that the qawwals of Delhi lay claim to. Amir Khusrau is credited with the invention of many things musical including the qawwali and musical instruments like the sitar and the tabla. 

An amazingly syncretic musical culture evolved in and around Delhi from the time of Amir Khusrau. This music drew from the keertan and the dhrupad tradition of the Hindus and grafted them with Arabic and Persian musical forms and instruments. Out of this emerged the qawwali, khayal and tarana. These were the forms that Iqbal bhai had inherited and excelled in.

He knew many old compositions not only of the earliest composers of khayal in Delhi from Muhammad Shah Rangile’s court like Sadarang (who, incidentally, lies buried in Mehrauli) but also later ones like the Hindu Vaishnav singer and composer Goswami Shrilal ji better known by his nom de plume of Kunwar Shyam whose temple lies in the by lanes of Dharampura in Old Delhi.

In fact, I never ceased to be amazed by his collection of Kunwar Shyam’s khayal and thumri compositions. 

Also read: The Magic of 'Dilli'

Till 1857 there were several families of singers and instrumentalists from Delhi employed at the Mughal court. The most revered master of Delhi at the time of Bahadur Shah Zafar was Qutub Baksh Khan better known by his title of Tanras Khan. When the British banished Zafar and dismantled the Mughal court, Tanras Khan migrated to Hyderabad from where his sons and progeny dispersed in various smaller courts of Deccan and Maharashtra; his last grandson Sardar Khan migrated to Lahore in the 1930s.

After Partition, most of this family followed. Ustad Naseeruddin Sami of Karachi belongs to that line of the Dilli Gharana. Among the other very widely known pupils of Tanras Khan were Ali Baksh and Fateh Ali Khan who went on to establish the Patiala style of singing that became the main style in western Punjab and later Pakistan. Ustad Feteh Ali Khan of Pakistan is from that lineage.

Iqbal bhai’s ancestors descended from Tanras Khan’s teacher Miyan Achpal.

Also read: Despite Animosity, Shared Cultural Heritage Holds India and Pakistan Together

With him gone, I can’t imagine going to a classical music concert in Delhi anymore. I can’t imagine an informal mehfil or house concert either. He was the king of all mehfils, he knew every musician and they all knew him. He knew their repertoires, their traditions and knew where to critically appreciate by giving ‘daad’ at the right places and invariably inspired the best in any musician.

He was warm and affectionate to his contemporaries and always deferential to his elders. In his black sherwani, white pyjamas and fur cap he was the archetypal old world ustad trying to hold his place in a city that was no longer what it once was.

Sadly, although musicians and connoisseurs fully realised his place and worth, Ustad Iqbal Ahmed never quite got his full due in post-Partition Delhi which had become, almost overnight, an alien megapolis. It had turned its back on its past as if to erase all memory.

With Iqbal bhai’s going I am reminded of what Govindrao Tembe – the Marathi musician and author who chronicled the life of music in Bombay and Maharashtra in the early 20th century – wrote describing the sudden death of Ustad Manjhi Khan in 1936.

Tembe quoted what the great Ustad Alladiya Khan had said on his son’s death. “I weep not only for the demise of my son but of the hundreds of years of sangeet vidya – musical knowledge – that went with him.”

Iqbal bhai takes with him 700 odd years of cultural history of Delhi. 

S. Kalidas has been an active commentator and participant on the Indian arts scene for well over four decades. Besides English, Kalidas can read, write and speak in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil.

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