(b Kirana, 11 Nov 1872; d 27 Oct 1936). North Indian (Hindustani) vocalist. He spent his early life among families of sārangī players and khayāl performers. He studied with his father, Kale Khan, a court musician at Bharatpur, and with his cousin-brother Nanne Khan, formerly a court musician at Bidar. He also learnt from the sārangī playing of other members of his family.
His first position was teaching the household women at the Baroda court. He was influenced by Maharaja Sayajji Rao of Baroda who was fascinated by musical notation and by the possibility of teaching Indian music in institutions rather than through the traditional guru-śisya system. Abdul Karim's methodical inclination led him to work with two individuals who wanted to discover the basis of scale-building in Indian music. He sang for Rao-Bahadur K.G. Deval, who published his conclusions in The Hindu Musical Scale and the Twenty-Two Shrutees (Pune, 1910), and assisted Ernest Clements, a scholar of Western music, who published Introduction to the Study of Indian Music (New York, 1913). When Clements began experimenting with a fixed-śruti harmonium, Abdul Karim's interest declined.
As a young singer he toured Maharashtra and Karnataka, spending periods in Sholapur and Kolhapur. In 1910 he began a music school in Belgaum, the Arya Sangīt Vidyalaya, offering individual guru-śisya training. He subsequently opened a branch of the school in Pune with his renowned Kirana cousin Abdul Wahid Khan and another in Bombay which offered collective classroom teaching. After a period in Mysore, Abdul Karim settled permanently in Miraj in 1927, teaching and touring to give concerts.
Abdul Karim Khan's singing voice was high, sweet and pliant. In performing khayāl, he cultivated elongation of pitches and mīnd (possibly from sārangī style), emphasizing pitch over rhythm and speed. Designated as his musical heir, Balkrishnabuwa Kapileshwari continued his teacher's work on music theory and wrote his biography (1972). Other important students were Roshanara Begum, Behre Buwa and Sawai Gandharva.
V.H. Deshpande: Gharāndāj gāyakī (Marathi, 1961; Eng. trans., 1973, 2/1987, as Indian Musical Traditions: an Aesthetic Study of the Gharanas in Hindustani Music)
B. Kapileshwari: Sangīt ratna Abdul Karimkhan yancha gīvancharitra [Life story of the jewel of music, Abdul Karim Khan] (1972)
K.O. Dixit: ‘Khansaheb Abdul Karim Khan and the Kirana Gharana of Hindustani Music’, Quarterly Journal of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, ii/1 (1973), 37–43
J.S. Jariwalla: Abdul Karim: the Man of the Times: Life and Art of a Great Musician (Bombay, 1973)
B.C. Wade: Khyāl: Creativity within North India's Classical Vocal Tradition (Cambridge, 1984)
Khansahib Abdul Karim Khan, Columbia 33ECX 3253 (1966)
Echoes of a Golden Voice, perf. A.K. Khan, Columbia 33EXC 3304 (1975)
Classical Music of India, perf. A.K. Khan, Columbia 33ECX 3251 (1983)
BONNIE C. WADE