(b Kalanau, 1912; d 31 Dec 1973). North Indian (Hindustani) vocalist. Resident most of his life in Indore, he was an exceptional self-styled Hindustani vocalist. Rather than receiving formal instruction, he grew up with the music of various artists including his father, Shri Mir Khan (a sārangī player of the Dhanadhtha gharānā and a court musician at Indore), the vocalist Rajab Ali Khan (a court musician at Dewas), the vīnā player Murad Khan, the vocalists Amanat Khan and Aman Ali Khan of Bombay and particularly the Kirana gharānā vocalist Abdul Wahid Khan.
Amir Khan's improvisatory khayāl style was marked by a slow-speed ālāp-style singing, emphasizing the rāga with little acceleration of the tāla and rhythmic play. He made extensive use of the mellow lower register of his voice. He was unusually careful about enunciating the text, including final consonants, and he had a distinctive manner of introducing a sudden fast ornament on a pitch in a relatively reposeful melodic context as a way of indicating the approach to a melodic cadence. In khayāl, he also liked to improvise melody to sargam (pitch syllables); he even ornamented pitches sung to sargam. His tān were varied, including passages starting in the lower register and rippling into the high register. He sang easily in the three octaves required of the best singers. Because his vilambit laya was so slow, khayāl sung at a moderate speed offered a striking contrast; he liked to pair a composition of moderate speed with a fast one or with a tarānā. Occasionally he sang a sequence of compositions using the three speeds, with a change of rāga for musical interest.
One of India's finest 20th-century musicians, Amir Khan was a fellow of Bihar's Sangeet Natak Akademi, received the President's award from the Sangeet Natak Akademi (New Delhi) in 1967 and was named Padma Bhushan in 1971 by the President of India.
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)
S.K. Saxena: ‘Ustad Ameer Khan: the Man and his Art’, Journal of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, no.31 (1974), 5–12
B.C. Wade: Khyāl: Creativity within North India's Classical Vocal Tradition (Cambridge, 1984)
Ameer Khan, EALP 1253 (1960); reissued as EMI 6TC S 02B 5090 (1981) [rāgas Marwa and Darbārī Kānadā]
Khayal, perf. A. Khan, HMV EASD 1331 (1968); reissued as EMI TC-CKDA 10013 (1978)
Ustad Amir Khan, EASD 1357 (1970) [rāgas Hansdhwani and Malkauns]; Malkauns reissued as EMI 6TCS 02B 5090 (1981)
Ustad Amir Khan, ECLP 2765 (1976) [khayāl Bilas Khani Todi and Abhogi]
For further recordings see M.S. Kinnear: A Discography of Hindustani and Karnatic Music (Westport, CT, 1985)
BONNIE C. WADE