The Ali Akbar Khan Library will be housed on the AACM campus in Marin County, California. This unique repository will contain over 40 years of the Maestro’s musical compositions, recorded classes and performances. We are planning to open the library to the public in 2014 with over 7,000 hours of recordings both in audio and video formats. In the following years we will continue to add to the archives from various outside sources.
Along with audio and video recordings of Maestro Khan we will offer tabla classes, articles and reviews, historical photos, historical documentation of the students and events that took place at the AACM, books about North Indian classical music, and concerts that were presented by the AACM throughout its long history that document many of India’s most illustrious artists
The immediate goal of the Ali Akbar Khan Library and Archive is to complete the digital preservation of over 7,000 hours of sensitive class audio tapes, and 900 concert recordings while referencing them for public access. In the next phase of the Library’s creation we will be focusing on building a user-friendly interface for access to the collection. An experienced student, or music lover, may want to immediately access the database of ragas to locate a particular composition or to listen to a particular raga, or tabla accompanist, while a novice to the music would like to better understand the workings of ragas and talas (rhythm cycles). We will be offering a guide to help people understand the value of listening to the ragas at the corresponding time of day that they were created, and to help the inexperienced user choose a raga or rhythm cycle to listen to.
An archive of a master musician such as Ali Akbar Khansahib has never been available before. Our long term goals are to utilize the library and archive to continue offering the finest education in North Indian Classical Music in the world. This collection will provide present and future generations with the opportunity to study directly from Maestro Khan’s teachings, both ensuring the preservation and purity of North Indian Classical Music.