Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was associated with which musical instrument?

Explanation

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan (1922-2009) was one of the greatest sarod players of the 20th century. He was the son of the great musician Ustad Allauddin Khan of Maihar, and he became famous around the world for his music.

Ali Akbar Khan was born in Shibpur, in present-day Bangladesh, and grew up in Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, where his father was the court musician. His father trained him in music from the age of three, with great strictness, in vocal music, drums and then the sarod. He became known for his deep, rich tone, his mastery of ragas and his creative improvisation. He was a close musical partner of Pandit Ravi Shankar, who was his father's student and his brother-in-law (Ravi Shankar married his sister, Annapurna Devi), and the two performed many famous duets (jugalbandis). In 1955, at the invitation of the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, he performed in the United States and recorded one of the first long-playing records of Indian classical music in the West. He founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Kolkata in 1956 and in California, United States, in 1967, where he taught thousands of students. He composed music for films such as Satyajit Ray's "Devi" (1960). He received the Padma Bhushan (1967) and the Padma Vibhushan (1989), and he was the first Indian musician to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1991). Yehudi Menuhin described him as "an absolute genius".

The sarod is a fretless stringed instrument with a metal fingerboard, played with a plectrum. Other famous sarod players include Ustad Allauddin Khan, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Sharan Rani, Buddhadev Das Gupta and Zarin Sharma.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Sitar is linked with Ravi Shankar, his brother-in-law.
• ✗Tabla is linked with Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain.
• ✗Surbahar is linked with his sister Annapurna Devi.