Saraswati's Sarod Poem by gershon hepner

The music that so deeply flowed
from Ali Akhbar Khan’s sarod
has reached its estuary, the east,
which mingles with the west. Deceased,
forever he’ll be disinterred
by music of the strings he stirred,
still resonating, hale and hearty,
for devotees of Saraswati.

In the Vedic system Saraswati, is the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. Saraswati has been identified with the Vedic Saraswati River. She is considered as consort of Brahma, the god of creation. Thus, with the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati or Durga, she forms the Tridevi ('three goddesses') , who are consorts of the male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, respectively. Saraswati's children are the Vedas, which are the oldest sacred texts of Hinduism. This poem is devoted to her and to her protegé, Ali Akhbar Khan, who died in his home in San Anselmo on June 18,2009. William Grimes writes in the NYT on June 19,2009:

Ali Akbar Khan, the foremost virtuoso of the lutelike sarod, whose dazzling technique and gift for melodic invention, often on display in concert with his brother-in-law Ravi Shankar, helped popularize North Indian classical music in the West, died on Thursday at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 87. The cause was kidney failure, said a spokesman for the Ali Akbar College of Music. Mr. Khan, who was named a national treasure by the Indian government in 1989, carried on the musical traditions of his father, Allauddin Khan, whose ashram in East Bengal produced some of India’s most celebrated musicians, notably Mr. Shankar, the flutist Pannalal Ghosh and the sitarist Nikhil Banerjee. Unlike his father, a volatile and uneven performer, Mr. Khan maintained an austere demeanor onstage while coaxing passages of extraordinary intensity from his sarod, an instrument with 25 strings,10 plucked with a piece of coconut shell while the remainder resonate sympathetically. “He was not as flashy as Ravi Shankar, but he had the ability to play a single note, or a simple passage of notes, and draw out such amazing depth, ” said John Schaefer, the host of “New Sounds” and “Soundcheck” on WNYC-FM in New York. “That’s why he was able to get a world of emotion and color out of ‘Malasri, ’ which is often called a three-note raga. That, for me, stands as the calling card of the genius of Ali Khan.” The violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who brought Mr. Khan to the United States in 1955, called him “an absolute genius” and “the greatest musician in the world.”

In the Vedic system Saraswati, is the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. Saraswati has been identified with the Vedic Saraswati River. She is considered as consort of Brahma, the god of creation. Thus, with the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati or Durga, she forms the Tridevi ('three goddesses') , who are consorts of the male trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, respectively. Saraswati's children are the Vedas, which are the oldest sacred texts of Hinduism.

6/23/09