1934-1935

More than 60 years after his death in 1937, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan retains his reputation as one of the greatest singers India ever produced. Possessed of an elastic, honeyed voice that poured out like mercury, he influenced generations of singers including Mohammed Rafi, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and Pandit Pran Nath. Born at the end of the 19th century to a family of musicians that extended back in time for centuries, his art was formed in the culture of the courts of the maharajas under British colonialism but was changed by his genius, imagination, and a life marked by sacrifices for love, unsatisfied ambition, abandonment, and heartbreak.