Ali Akbar Quotes & Sayings

Our sages developed music from time immemorial to take shelter in one's true self. Real music is not for wealth, not for honors, or not even for the joys of the mind - it is a path for realization and salvation. — Ali Akbar Khan

Real music is not for wealth, not for honours or even the joys of the mind ... but as a path for realisation and salvation. — Ali Akbar Khan

Alhamdulillah can be seen in the phenomenon of the arc of ascent and descent, how everything returns to the source, and how boundless gratitude from the source flows into all of creation. Subhanallah offers us the image of swimming around the central still point in spiraling circles of light. All beings and all realms of being constantly circumambulate and interpenetrate that heart center. Allahu Akbar appears to be even greater than the other two because it leads our process to go beyond concepts. The mind falls away and is led into essence. There is not a trace left of the conceptual. — Wali Ali Meyer

Music is like a river or stream that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man's soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don't want it to die. It must spread all over the world. — Ali Akbar Khan

Mona told herself that even if her recent feelings were a delusion, they were by far preferable to the thirty years of immaculate deception she had suffered in her first marriage. Yet she had to forgive Akbar Ahmad - perhaps because he was already dead. — Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Music is the only thing that you can share with a million million people and you don't lose, you gain. It helps you to get energy and to live long, because when your soul is very happy then you don't want to die. — Ali Akbar Khan

I have an understanding of Queen and the way Freddie Mercury did his harmonies. I know what tablas sound like, because my father played a lot of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. — Lupe Fiasco

Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument ... actually, you are singing inside. — Ali Akbar Khan

If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist-then you may please even God. — Ali Akbar Khan