It was Rudyard Kipling who declared East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet. But sarangi player Suhail Yusuf Khan is constantly blurring the lines and proving East and West do indeed meet all the time. He divides his time between classical music concerts and recording sessions and gigs with alternative fusion band Advaita and electro-folk-rock act Adi & Suhail — and that’s just in India.

You could say Suhail has plenty going for him, born into one of India’s top musical families. He’s the grandson of Ustad Sabri Khan and the family traces its musical lineage back to Tansen, the great vocalist at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Sabri Khan also played alongside violinist Yehudi Menuhin and The Beatles. “I was lucky my mom moved from Kashipur to Delhi and into my nana’s house,” says Suhail.

While Suhail’s been performing since age 11, still nothing prepared him for his most recent mega-performance at Glastonbury, the world’s biggest music festival. “It’s not a festival — it’s a movement, a culture,” he enthuses.

At Glastonbury, Suhail, who’s now 27, donned his fusion hat and played alongside friend-and-collaborator  Donn Bhat and drummer Ashwin Andrew as part of electro-rock outfit Donn Bhat + Passenger Revelator. This year, Glastonbury had over 100 stages and 175,000 music fans turned up. 

Suhail, Bhat and Andrew were lead act on one stage.

On a different note, he toured Britain this summer with experimental collaborative group Yorkston Thorne Khan. In May, he was part of the Alchemy festival at London’s Southbank Centre, which had legendary tabla player Pandit Zakir Hussain on the line-up. And his next gig is a collaboration with tabla exponent and music innovator Talvin Singh in a July 17 special Pakeezah set at Berlin’s Wassermusik.

It would be unfair to assume Suhail’s musical path has been easy. At eight, Suhail’s life became strictly scheduled between school and riyaaz — his time split between his nana and uncle who were his gurus. “My friends were busy listening to Linkin Park and hip-hop and I’d return from school and touch my gurus’ feet. It was a bit overwhelming,” Suhail concedes.
 But being taught by Ustad Sabri Khan had its advantages. Suhail’s first-ever international concert appearance was at 11 in Liverpool. The concert was billed as three generations of sarangi players and included his Birmingham uncle. Suhail had a 15-minute cameo. “Those 15 minutes felt much longer. I could hear each heartbeat as loud as a cricket.”
 

Khan’s globe-trotting schedule gave him an exalted status among friends at Delhi’s Tagore International School where he studied, but life at home had no space for frivolity. “At times, I’d catch myself thinking my friends had it so much better,” he says. But he soon realised he was happiest playing the sarangi.

“I’m glad my family kept me honest,” says Suhail, who has an infectious passion for the sarangi, although purists might argue he shouldn’t be making music with rock bands and playing in clubs.

Through collaborations, either with the school rock band or Incognito (2002) — his first band— or groups like Artistes Unlimited, he made the sarangi more appealing to an audience that grew up on Limp Bizkit and Radiohead. “Indian classical music families don’t usually send their kids to public schools but I had this great opportunity where I met people who were drummers or bass guitarists in a rock band. I remember on tour seeing my grandfather collaborate with a jazz band where the guitarist was Finnish. That inspired me to think out-of-the-box,” he says.

Suhail’s family didn’t always share his enthusiasms. They’re a traditional Muslim family and were concerned their boy was losing his way. “My mom nearly had a heart attack. She thought rock bands were about sex, drugs and alcohol,” he laughs.

It wasn’t till 2006 that his family came to see a show. By then, Advaita had been written about a few times. “Advaita was performing at Delhi’s Habitat Centre. I later overheard my grandfather telling someone, ‘Not bad. I thought he was wasting his time but he might be good at it’. That felt really good,” says Suhail,. 

The band has been together for more than a decade and Khan’s sarangi is an integral part of its distinctive sound. “Advaita has made me a class apart from other classical musicians, forcing me to understand the complexities of music-making and song-writing,” he says.

 Advaita’s also where fans saw Khan, the singer, come alive — a role he built on in his other project, Adi & Suhail. In songs like Laage Re and Zindagi on Adi & Suhail’s debut album, Culture Code Landscape, he displays his vocal range. “I have to constantly update my musicality and that’s helped me greatly.”

For some listeners, Suhail will remain Ustad Sabri Khan’s grandson. And it’s not a tag Suhail minds. But the musician, who’ll celebrate two decades of playing the sarangi in 2017, is focused on creating his own legacy by taking the sarangi’s sound far and wide to distant corners of the globe.

Photographs by Inni Singh