Listening to Ustad Faiyaz Khan - Part 1 of 4
- Anagha Bhat
- Jan 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 16
Image 01 - Ustad Faiyaz Khan
So much has been written and said about Khan sahab’s gayaki, and yet it never feels enough, the music itself continues to fascinate and draw one back.
Each new attempt to engage with his art feels as absorbing as the last. It leaves one with a sense of awe that never quite settles, reminding one of how much there is to learn from these recordings.
(For a background on Ustad Faiyaz Khan's life and musical lineage , see following profiles: ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faiyaz_Khan’ and Aftab-e-Mousiki Ustad Fayyaz Khan (1881—1950) | Sahapedia )
Ustad Faiyaz Khan sahab was renowned for a highly resonant, full-bodied voice , deep, powerful, and rich in overtones - heavy yet remarkably malleable and capable of the most delicate manoeuvres.
His technique and craft were matched by a sharp musical intelligence in the way he designed his presentations, and by an emotional outpouring, often through his distinctive pukaars, that mark most of his recitals.
While listening, I found myself returning to a few remarks by musicians and scholars, which offer useful signposts before turning to the music itself.
As Pt. Kumar Prasad Mukherjee 1 notes in his analysis of Khan sahab’s music - What stands out is his consistent use of raaga vaachak phrases. He rarely sought radical departures for their own sake, yet his alaaps remained deeply creative and emotionally charged.
Pt. B. R. Deodhar ji draws attention to a crucial aspect of Khan sahab’s voice 2, especially in the context of the prevailing aesthetics of his time. He writes : “Formerly the vogue was for musicians to sing in a high key. As a result, even those who were naturally gifted with a masculine voice tried hard to sing in a higher pitch, and this artificial strain often caused damage to the quality of the voice. Fayyaz Khan refused to fall prey to such practices. He was fully conscious of the natural timbre of his voice and its limitations. His note was kali ek or safed ek, but the voice had been trained to such perfection that it sounded full and resonant. ”
Dr. Ashok Ranade ji, in one of his lectures 3, remarks that it is vital to absorb the full talim a gharana offers and then, having internalised it, to move beyond what is learnt and allow one’s own gayaki to emerge and that Khan sahab embodied this idea completely - rooted in tradition, yet unmistakably individual.
Ustad Faiyaz Khan sahab’s assimilation of different elements from Dhrupad, Thumri, and Tappa into Khayal was seamless, these influences never felt like a patch work, but fully internalised.
Over the next few posts, I have spent time with a few of Khan sahab’s recordings, trying to reflect on what unfolds in them, within the limits of my own understanding .
Choosing which recordings to write about was difficult , nearly every recording in the archive felt special in its own way.
I have mostly chosen live performances and longer versions where available, many of them not commercially released. His thumris and dadras, extraordinary as they are, would need a separate space altogether.
Part One - Listening to Faiyaz Khan sahab’s renditions of Raaga Jaijaiwanti
These are recordings of the Baageshri-ang Jaijaiwanti (the other being the more popular Des-ang version).
Track 01
In the first recording, one immediately notices how effortlessly he establishes the raaga’s identity- sometimes within just a few seconds, often with a single phrase.
He spends nearly two minutes exploring and reinforcing the shadja, circling back to it repeatedly ,and making it the reference point around which the raaga unfolds.
At around 2:22min, his strategic use of repetition begins to reveal itself, he repeats short patterns with subtle variations, yet the repetition never feels monotonous. On the contrary, he uses it to his advantage, each phrase leads naturally into the next.
Between 6:03min and 6:29min, one can hear how multiple short fragments of phrases are used to bring in emotion without losing the flow.
Another hallmark of his style was how he played with anticipation ,holding the listener in expectation and delaying resolution just enough to deepen the impact of arrival on the swar - in this case, the shadja.
Around 7:20–7:36 min, he delays the expected ‘ma ga re’ and instead sings ‘ma re ga’, choosing a less predictable route within the raaga’s framework.
Throughout this rendition, Khan Sahab’s phrase-based singing reveals itself as a process of weaving , each time he returns to sa, he stitches together all the earlier threads of melody into a coherent fabric.
His approach to laya is equally nuanced. The patterns he creates are not driven by calculation alone; even subtle shifts in laya shape the movement of the music. (around 11:23min).
The phrase ‘sa ga re’, an unusual construction he employs between the 11th and 12th minute, stands out for its freshness.
When he moves into taans (around 13:30min), we hear the gamak-laden, weighty flow that characterises his style. The taans are never merely displays of skill, but only those that bring the raaga’s essence forward.
Track 02
The next recording, which includes the vilambit Ektaal bandish followed by his self-composed drut teentaal piece “Naadaan Ankhiyan,” offers another layer of insight.
The vilambit tempo here is notably faster than what one hears today, giving the rendition a steady but forward-moving pulse.
His singing reflects the strong influence of the Gwalior gharana - especially in his medium-tempo sapaat taans and tappa-inspired fast taans (around 5:51min).
What stands out is how he extracts meaning and emotion from each phrase, both melodically and through bol-banaav. The words, swaras, and rhythm seem inseparable, creating an outpouring of emotion.
Track 03
In another nom-tom alaap of Jaijaiwanti, Khan sahab adopts an entirely different approach. His movements seem more geometric - contrasting the earlier recording’s smoother, more curved flow ( around 7:31min).
At 9:30min, he sings the same melodic phrase multiple times, each with a different inflection, showing how small shifts in intonation can alter its expression.
At 11:15min, he takes a larger statement and explores all its internal sub-phrases, almost like a kaleidoscope .
Around 14:20min, comes the pukaar -his signature invocation of emotional intensity, with which he lifts the entire performance to another plane.
Seen across these recordings, his music was not just an exposition of a raaga, but a careful balance of design and instinct, control and release.
Here is a list of References.
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