I remember Ravishankar in an interview said " Playng Sitar is not a tennis match. Vilayat & myself both play sitar. It is foolish to compare in art. Like wise some people compared Bhimsen Joshi & Kumar Gandharv.
Re: Not a tennis match
by P S SHAH on Dec 10, 2018 09:42 AM
Both Vilayat Khan and Ravi Shankar were great Sitar players representing different gharana with different style. Vilayat Khan was little arrogant having great ego and superior complex for representing very old gharana and was following pure classical style and was master in playing Gayaki style . Even though he was great, he had comparatively less followers and was not as popular as Ravi Shankar who brought Indian classical music and specially Sitar on International scene. One can also not forget Pandit Nikhil banerjee who was also a disciple of legendary Baba Alluddin Khan of Maihar gharana and was known for his technical virtuosity and clinical execution. Along with Pandit ravi Shankar and Ustad vilayat Khan , he emerged as one of the leading exponent of the Sitar.
It is simply ridiculous to compare both the stalwarts. Both of them are great in their art. They belong to different gharanas of music. I think they would have never thought of the comparison as written in this article. It is only followers of music who start these conversations.
