Ustad bismillah khan

Born:21 March 1916

Died:21 August 2006

• He often referred to by the title Ustad, was an Indian musician credited with popularizing the shehnai, a subcontinental wind instrument of the oboe class.
• While the shehnai had long held importance as a folk instrument played primarily schooled intraditional ceremonies, Khan is credited with elevating its status and bringing it to the concert stage.
• He was awarded India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 2001, becoming the third classical musician after M. S. Subbulakshmi and Ravi Shankar to be accorded this distinction.
• On his 102nd birthday, Google honored Bismillah Khan with a Google doodle.
• He had a brief association with movies.
• He played the shehnai for super star Rajkumar’s role of Appanna in the Kannada movie Sanaadi Appanna which became a blockbuster.
• He acted in Jalsaghar, a movie by Satyajit Ray and provided sound of shehnai in Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959). Noted director Goutam Ghose directed Sange Meel Se Mulaqat, a documentary about the life of Khan.
• In the 1967 film The Graduate, there is a poster advertising “Bismillah Khan and the seven musicians” on a street of Berkeley, California.
• He as a five year old, played gilli danda near a pond in the ancient estate of Dumraon in Bihar.
• He would regularly go to the nearby Biharji temple to sing the Bhojpuri ‘Chaita’, at the end of which he would earn a big laddu weighing 1.25kg, a prize given by the local Maharaja.

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