(fl early 18th century). Indian singer. The name Sadārang was a soubriquet; he was properly named Niyāmat or Na'mat Khān and perhaps originally called Khushal Khān, the son of Nirmal Khān. The names are in doubt, but one tradition held that he was descended on his father's side from the daughter of Tānsen. He trained with a variety of singers and poets at the courts of Bahadur Shah I and his successors, and became the leading and most celebrated musician at the artistically lively Delhi court of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah (ruled 1719–48). He has been traditionally associated with the rise, and even the invention, of the Hindustani vocal genre khayāl; an attractive but spurious story holds that he devised the form as a departure from the dhrupad and then taught his new compositions to two young Qavvāl singers. Contemporary Persian sources however show that Niyāmat Khān was one of a large number of khayāl singers in a diverse musical culture which accommodated a wide range of forms and styles. He was a noted bīn player and a singer in various styles of Hindustani music. His brother and nephew were also highly praised for their skill as instrumentalists.
See also India, §II, 4(ii).
N.P. Ahmad: Hindustani Music: a Study of its Development in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New Delhi, 1984), 165–6
M. Lath: ‘What is Khyal?’, National Centre for the Performing Arts Quarterly Journal, xvii/1 (1988), 1–11
A. Miner: Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wilhelmshaven, 1993)
T.J. Singh: Indian Music (Calcutta, 1995), 230–32
JONATHAN KATZ