A section from the journey

A New Music

Some of India's most loved music grew up in this age, where Hindu and Persian worlds met. A poet and musician named Amir Khusrau stands near its beginning. Out of the old, solemn dhrupad and the Sufi song called qawwali, the northern classical style we call Hindustani slowly took shape. Tradition credits Khusrau with much, including the sitar and tabla. We will say 'credited with', for the truth is woven and old.

Close your eyes for a moment and listen for it. The long, bending cry of a string. The patter of a drum, quick as rain. A voice that climbs and curls like smoke. This is the classical music of northern India, and much of it was born in the age we are walking through.

It was born, like so much in this age, from a meeting. India already had a deep and ancient music, rooted in the chant of the Vedas and the science of melody. Now into the courts and shrines of the north came the music of Persia, and the songs of the Sufis. Where these met, something new began to grow.

We call the style that grew there , the classical music of the north. It is one half of India's great classical tradition; its sister, the Carnatic music of the south, kept its own path. Hold the word Hindustani. It names not a religion, but a shared northern world of sound.

Near the dawn of this music stands one shining figure. His name was , and he lived from 1253 to 1325. He was a poet of dazzling gift, writing in Persian and in the everyday speech of the people. And he was a musician, beloved at the court and devoted to his teacher, the gentle Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi.

To understand what was growing, picture three forms of song side by side. The oldest was , a solemn and stately music, grand and slow, like a great river moving. Beside it rose , the Sufi song of devotion, sung in a gathering, building and building until hearts soar toward God. And in time a third form blossomed, called , freer and more soaring, full of feeling and grace.

Tradition gives Amir Khusrau a great share in all of this. It says he shaped the qawwali into the form still sung at the shrines today. It even says he gave the world two of its most loved instruments: the , the long-necked string that sings and bends, and the , the pair of drums that speak like a heartbeat.

Here your guide must step softly and be honest. Much of this is loving tradition, handed down with pride. Scholars who study the old records are not sure that Amir Khusrau truly invented any single instrument; the sitar and the tabla likely took their shape slowly, over many hands and many years. So we will say he is credited with these gifts, rather than claim he made them alone. That small honesty costs us nothing and keeps the story true.

And what we keep is far larger than any one claim. Khusrau's own early devotional songs drew on Hindu song as well as Persian, weaving the two together. That is the real marvel. In the meeting of these worlds, a whole music was born, neither purely one nor purely the other, but truly shared. It is the music that still rises from a stage, a shrine, a film, a wedding, all across the land today.

So when you next hear a sitar bend a note until it aches, or a tabla run like quick rain, remember where that sound was born. It came from an age we are often taught to remember only for its wounds. But this age sang, too. And some of its songs we have never stopped singing.

Think of a song that always moves you, and how little you care, in that moment, where it came from. Music slips past the walls we build between peoples. When has a piece of music carried you somewhere your ordinary thoughts could not go?