Sites of Memory in Hindustani Music: Yusuf Ali Khan and the Sitar Shops of Lucknow

Abstract

In late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century North India, musical instrument shops served as important meeting places where musicians overturned the feudal hierarchy of the royal court, forging bonds of camaraderie across social, musical and familial lines. This article explores the alternative socio-musical world of the instrument shop through a study of the sitar shops of Lucknow, focusing especially on the life of Yusuf Ali Khan, an influential but largely forgotten sitarist who was also a renowned instrument maker. Positing that dominant spaces and places of cultural production (such as the royal courts) shape our historical understandings, the article argues that minor sites of memory (such as the sitar shops of Lucknow) offer counter-narratives of Hindustani music history that illuminate unexpected dimensions of the larger tradition.