AAK Raga Radio
Welcome to the ‘AAK Raga Radio’.
Please choose a recording that most closely matches your current time
______________________________________________
The desire to create an ongoing 24-hour stream of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan’s music has been a dream of our director, Mary Khan, for decades now. She was almost able to convince Khansahib to record entirely new music for this project. However, time and circumstances put that dream on the proverbial shelf.
For his centennial celebrations, we wanted to revisit the idea, and decided to put together a version using Khansahib’s published recordings.
The idea was that one could choose their time of day and have Khansahib’s music continuously playing for a loop of 24-hours, with the ragas at their correct times. For those that are unfamiliar, the concept of raga, and the time of day was something of the utmost importance to Maestro Ali Akbar Khansahib, and his father, Acharya Baba Allauddin Khansahib. This is a large subject, and one that is steeped in mythos from millennia ago. One of the core concepts, however, is that the notes and the ragas will have more or less potency depending on whether or not you are listening to them (or playing them) at the “correct” time of day.
Khansahib would often explain deeper aspects of the seriousness he placed on this concept. One idea was that the ragas were also a healing modality. If one listened or played the ragas properly at their correct times, one could receive the raga’s power, and possibly gain the blessings of Ma Saraswati (the Goddess of music and knowledge).
There are many ways this collection of recordings could have gone, and this is only one iteration. There are so many recordings to choose from, and if one was to include the absolute multitude of concerts, this collection could potentially span multiple days – another idea for later.
Our hope was that at any time, one could simply listen to Khansahib without having to question if the time was “right”, and be able to be surrounded by his beautiful music all day & night. On Baba’s 100th birthday, we are so happy, and delighted to bring you ‘AAK Raga Radio’. We hope you enjoy this as much as we do.
We also want to give special thanks to George Ward, Sridhar Ganti, the late Sarbari Roy Choudhury, Sougata Roy Choudhury, Christopher Ris, Richard Harrington, the late Chazz Rook, David Trasoff, Lynn Taussig, Erik Franden, the countless music connoisseurs, and tape/record collectors over the decades for helping us with digitizing the original analog recordings, and helping preserve these timeless recordings for generations to come.
Welcome to the ‘AAK Raga Radio’.
Please choose a recording that most closely matches your current time
_________________________________________
The desire to create an ongoing 24-hour stream of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan’s music has been a dream of our director, Mary Khan, for decades now. She was almost able to convince Khansahib to record entirely new music for this project. However, time and circumstances put that dream on the proverbial shelf.
For his centennial celebrations, we wanted to revisit the idea, and decided to put together a version using Khansahib’s published recordings.
The idea was that one could choose their time of day and have Khansahib’s music continuously playing for a loop of 24-hours, with the ragas at their correct times. For those that are unfamiliar, the concept of raga, and the time of day was something of the utmost importance to Maestro Ali Akbar Khansahib, and his father, Acharya Baba Allauddin Khansahib. This is a large subject, and one that is steeped in mythos from millennia ago. One of the core concepts, however, is that the notes and the ragas will have more or less potency depending on whether or not you are listening to them (or playing them) at the “correct” time of day.
Khansahib would often explain deeper aspects of the seriousness he placed on this concept. One idea was that the ragas were also a healing modality. If one listened or played the ragas properly at their correct times, one could receive the raga’s power, and possibly gain the blessings of Ma Saraswati (the Goddess of music and knowledge).
There are many ways this collection of recordings could have gone, and this is only one iteration. There are so many recordings to choose from, and if one was to include the absolute multitude of concerts, this collection could potentially span multiple days – another idea for later.
Our hope was that at any time, one could simply listen to Khansahib without having to question if the time was “right”, and be able to be surrounded by his beautiful music all day & night. On Baba’s 100th birthday, we are so happy, and delighted to bring you ‘AAK Raga Radio’. We hope you enjoy this as much as we do.
We also want to give special thanks to Sridhar Ganti, the late Sarbari Roy Choudhury, Christopher Ris, Richard Harrington, the late Chazz Rook, David Trasoff, Lynn Taussig, Erik Franden, the countless music connoisseurs, and tape/record collectors over the decades for helping us with digitizing the original analog recordings, and helping preserve these timeless recordings for generations to come.