State Laughter

These are the only (known) recordings of Khan's singing. He apparently was adamantly against his voice being recorded as to keep others from imitating his style. OG player hater. These were recorded in secret for a radio broadcast in 1947, shortly before the singers death. This is an important document as it extends the lineage of both Hindustani classical and the American avant-garde/minimalist tradition. Pandit Pran Nath was a disciple of Khan and as is widely documented Nath was teacher to many American composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Charlemagne Palestine. And the generations go back tenfold and maybe this is some ancestry.com bullshit, but its still cool to hear. Even though this mans interesting life has been reduced to less than an hour of music. Now we can carve the narrative around that sonic fragment. Here's to John Cale and Henry Flynt, Pandit Pran Nath and Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. As it was recorded in 1947, the haze of recording technology looms a bit more than the Pandit Pran Nath 2xLP we carried, but the recording is still a bright document of its time.