Premiere: Sarod Artist and Producer Alam Khan’s Wide-Eyed ‘Akash’ Music Video

The year 2022 marks the centennial of the birth of Indian classical legend and sarod pioneer Ali Akbar Khan. A hundred years on, the legacy and boundaries of the sarod are still being pushed forward by his own. The late maestro’s son — Bay Area-bred sarod player, composer and producer Alam Khan — has launched a cinematic new album Mantram this week and it’s accompanied by an engrossing music video for the opening track “Akash,” directed by photographer and filmmaker Avani Rai.

Interestingly, Rai and Khan’s connection goes one generation back, when the former’s father — photographer Raghu Rai — worked with Ali Akbar Khan at different times over the years. Alam Khan says he and Rai connected online to collaborate, leading to not just the music video for “Akash” but also a series of NFT videos which are being released via a platform called mysterious.xyz. “After making this series of videos set to select tracks off of Mantram, we decided to do one more longer video for ‘Akash.’ […] The music and visuals of Mantram are a whole vibe to be experienced.” he adds.

Released via Canada-headquartered South Asian music label Snakes x Ladders, “Akash” sets a captivating pace for Mantram and visually, Rai dives right into the child-like wonderment in her protagonist’s eyes. Set in Mumbai, Khan says about the video, “From his mundane day of riding in auto rickshaws to taking a train ride, everything is fresh, beautiful, and filled with possibility as we are all one people under the sky through a child’s eyes.”

Mantram was originally conceived in 2019, when Khan began composing for a contemporary Kathak dance production with the Chitresh Das Institute in San Francisco. Collaborators on the eight-track album include Carnatic vocalist Aditya Prakash, sarangi veteran Ustad Sultan Khan, drummer Sidecar Tommy aka Tommy Cappel, bansuri player Jay Gandhi and tabla artist Nilan Chaudhuri, among others. Khan — who has previously released hip-hop-informed music as part of the duo Grand Tapestry — adds about the album, “While some of the pieces are more closely based off of ragas, it is a departure from the classical pretty heavily and in much more of an open-creatively, no-rules, sky-is-the-limit type of approach.” 

Watch the video for “Akash” below. Stream ‘Mantram’ here.