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"Munshi Raziuddin descends from Tanras Khan, a major figure of the Delhi Gharaana who
performed and was prominent in the court of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zaffar. He
spent his earlier years in Hyderabad Deccan. His desire for learning and his inquisitiveness caused
him to master just about any language or dialect spoken in Northern India as well as Arabic and
Persian, and to travel the length and breadth of pre-partition India, as well as the Middle East. His
first trip to Europe was to Paris, in the inter-war period, when he was a youth. He accompanied
some Sufi with whom he was rather taken at the time. He did not visit the continent again until 1990.
"His spoken Urdu had a mellifluous beauty that is no longer encountered. His mastery of poetry
enabled him to weave a tapestry of expression, combining couplets from diverse poets to create a
singular poetic context. His knowledge of the raaga was absolute, and rare was a song where he
would stay within the confines of a single raaga, choosing instead a medley of raagas, poets,
couplets and languages to create the musical experience. He successfully resisted the urge to resort
to the vulgarization of Qawwali and stayed in the gayaki as had passed through the generations of
his lineage. Despite his adherence to tradition, he was intensely curious about the contemporary
world. In his first visit to Vienna, one of the first things he wanted to hear was Michael Jackson, who
was the rage at the time. On hearing some of my children's favourite tracks, he proceeded to try and
spot the raagas that could be the root of Michael's songs.
"In addition to his domains of musical knowledge he studied and practiced Yunani medicine, and
was a learned Sufi Scholar. He had that rarely encountered intellectual clarity to be able to express
simple answers to the most complex problems. He was a cook of fairly fearsome proportions and
had a terrificand irreverentsense of humour. In later years he took to distinctly eccentric forms of
dress. Despite his flamboyance, he was modest in spirit. My wife, in the Indian gesture of respect,
would bend down and touch his feet on meeting him, and one could see his embarrassment at being
so deferentially greeted by a Saydani.
"Above all, he was a friend, philosopher and guide. His passing has left an unfillable spiritual and
intellectual vacuum. He rests at the elbow of the main mausoleum of the Mewa Shah Graveyard with
a prominent sign adorning the canopy over his grave. In Urdu, it says 'Hazrat Munshi Raziuddin
Ahmad Khan, Qawwal', and a couplet expressing his desire to change the world with his music. A
simple sarcophagus covers the grave, and visitors have draped chadars over it, in reverence to the
man's memory. Weighing the chadars down are two pieces of marble with the English 'Welcome'
and the Urdu 'Khush Amdeed' etched on them. A sweet, warm and nave touch for a man who was
an edifice of knowledge yet never lost his innate innocence and affection for life."
-Text taken from Asif Mamu's "Notes on the Music".