Ustad Sabri Khan Stamp

This post features the Ustad Sabri Khan stamp from India in 2018. India is a country that celebrates its musical culture on postage stamps. The earliest example is a 1961 stamp of the Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. More recently, in 2014, India celebrated eight twentieth-century musicians in a set of musician stamps. On this blog, you can also read about other Indian musicians depicted on stamps including Digambar Paluskar, Narayan Bhatkhande, Bhimsen Joshi, Damal Krishnaswamy, and Gangubai Hangal. Given the tremendous traditions of music on the subcontinent, it makes sense that India celebrates it with its stamps.

Ustad Sabri Khan

The famous musician Sabri Khan was born on May 21, 1927 in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. His family belonged to the Senia Gharana. This was a tradition that links him to the Miyan Tansen, a fifteenth-century singer in the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court. The young Sabri Khan began playing the sarangi under the instruction of his grandfather Ustad Haji Mohammed Khan and, later, his father Ustad Chajju Khan.

He rose to national fame by playing on All India Radio beginning in the 1940s. Khan was famous for accompany singers on the station. At midnight on August 15, 1947, when India became independent, he was one of the musicians in Parliament hall playing to celebrate the occasion.

Then, in 1968, Sabri Khan went on tour with Ravi Shankar to Europe and the United States. He would eventually play across Europe and Asia, across the United States and in Mexico, and in any other countries. As a result, it is said that he introduced the sarangi, an instrument of Indian classical music, to the world.

Khan even became a favorite of Ringo Starr of The Beatles. After hearing the sarangi, Ringo fell in love with the sound of the instrument. Moreover Khan gave a private concert for The Beatles and even gave a few lessons on the instrument to Starr. Additionally, Sabri Khan played with the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin in 1970. Then, in 1992, Khan played on an album for the American rock band Blind Melon.

Sabri Khan was also an important teacher of the sarangi and was an inspiration to a generation of players across India. He also taught students in Britain, Poland, Canada, Japan, and China. Khan was also a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His last performance took place in Norway in 2007.

The Sarangi

The sarangi is the most important bowed string instrument of classical Hindustani music. It is known for its beautiful tone that can mimic the sound of the human voice. It has four gut melody strings that pass over the bridge, run across the skin belly and fingerboard, and attach to pegs in the pegbox. Underneath these playing strings are as many as forty metal sympathetic strings. The player bows the melody strings causing the sympathetic strings to ring ‘ in sympathy’ with their overtones. The player changes pitch by pressing the melody strings from the side with their fingernails, a technique that makes the instrument difficult to master.

The Stamp

The postage stamp depicting Ustad Sabri Khan was released on December 13, 2018, a little more than three years after his death. The multi-color stamp depicts Sabri Khan sitting on the ground holding his sarangi and playing it with a bow. It is the design of Kamleshwar Singh and has the denomination of five Indian rupee.

Finally, we are lucky to have some recordings and even some videos of Sabri Khan. Make sure to check some out and listen to the very special sound of his sarangi.