Indian talent wins big honours at the prestigious Aga Khan Music Awards

Tabla player Ustad Zakir Hussain, Sindhi sarangi player Asin Khan Langa, and sarod player Soumik Datta feature on the list of winners announced by the prestigious Aga Khan Music Awards administered by the Aga Khan Music Programme, which is an endeavour of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Classical sarangi player Dilshad Khan from the Sikar gharana has got a special mention. All four have their roots in India. Datta was born in West Bengal, grew up in Mumbai, and moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 14. The other three live in India.

They will be publicly honoured in Muscat, capital of Oman, at a ceremony and affiliated events between October 29 and 31 in conjunction with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

The master jury that named the winners and special mentions for the 2022 Aga Khan Music Awards (AKMA) includes H.E. Shaikha Hala Bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, Director General, Culture and Arts Directorate at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities; Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Artistic Director, Silk Road International Music Festival in Azerbaijan; Divya Bhatia, Festival Director, Jodhpur RIFF (Rajasthan International Folk Festival); Rachel Cooper, Director, Culture as Diplomacy at Asia Society New York; Yurdal Tokcan, Artistic Director, Istanbul State Turkish Music Ensemble; and Dhafer Youssef, a Tunisian oud player, vocalist and composer.

On a phone call, Bhatia said, “It was a privilege and an honour to be invited to be on the AKMA Master Jury and work with my fellow jury members who are distinguished arts professionals from Turkey, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and the United States. Hundreds of nominations were received, and it was our job as the Master Jury to review these nominations and deliberate over them. It was not easy to come up with the final list from such a diverse pool of exceptionally talented nominees.”

These awards were set up by Shah Karim al-Husseini, better known by his hereditary title as the Aga Khan, Imam or spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. According to a press release issued by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), these awards are given out in order to “recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence”. Shia Ismaili Muslims comprise a multi-ethnic global community speaking diverse languages and spread out across South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Europe.

On a phone call, Asin Khan Langa, said, “Yeh award milna hamaare liye bohot badi baat hai. Iss award ke zariye hamaari community aur hamaare gaanv ka naam bhi hoga. Hum apne music ko, apni paramapara ko zinda rakhna chaahte hain.” (Getting this award is a big deal for me. Because of this honour, the Langa community that I belong to and my village will be known more widely. We want to keep our music and our traditions alive.”

He hails from a community of musicians in Badnava Jageer, a village in the Barmer district of Rajasthan. He sings and plays the Sindhi sarangi, a folk instrument he is passionate about. He also teaches music to Langa children. He is excited to perform in Muscat with vocalist and khartal player Zakir Khan as well as dholak player Sadiq Khan. Their band is called SAZ, and the band name was derived from the first letter of each band member’s name.

Soumik Datta, who combines his training in Hindustani classical music with pop, rock, electronica, and film soundtracks, will be awarded for addressing issues such as climate change, the refugee crisis and mental health through his music. In response to an email seeking his reactions to the award, he said, “I am so deeply moved to receive this award which also honours my guru (Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta), parents and mentors.” He is currently touring his stage show “Hope Notes”, which weaves stories of refugees with sarod. He is also looking forward to a new album called “Silent Spaces” that will launch this Diwali.

Hussain will get the Special Prize for Lifetime Achievement, honouring his “highly visible model of enlightened cross-cultural musicianship that has elevated the status of the tabla both in India and around the world through countless artistic collaborations, concert tours, commissions, recordings and film scores.” Apart from his status as a maestro, his contributions as a teacher will be celebrated. He has mentored thousands of people who have attended his annual tabla workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 30 years.

On a phone call, Dilshad Khan said, “Artists are hungry for opportunities to share their work. I am grateful to the jury for this great honour on a global platform where I will get to present India’s musical heritage. Asin Khan Langa will play the folk sarangi and I will play the classical sarangi at a performance that will be attended by the Aga Khan and his family.”

The AKDN press release indicates that award winners and the recipients of a special mention “will share a prize fund of $500,000 as well as opportunities for professional development.” What does this mean in concrete terms? “These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation and dissemination projects.”

The other award winners and musicians who have got special mentions from the Master Jury are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Mauritania, Indonesia, Tanzania, Iran, and Oman.

Why does the Aga Khan feel the need to invest time and money into promoting music?
The Aga Khan considers music to be a “strong spiritual anchor” that deepens “a sense of community, identity and heritage, while simultaneously reaching out in powerful ways to people of different backgrounds”. He said this at the first ceremony of the Aga Khan Music Awards held in March 2019. He also asserted that “in some parts of the world, the words ‘Muslim’ and ‘music’ are not often linked together in the public mind…But they should be.”

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintanwriting

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