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.”

“Our music is a sacred art. You have to practice and you have to be able to concentrate on it for a very long time, and you can't be doing a lot of other things.”

“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life, bringing peace, abolishing strife.”

“Patience is the main thing. It is not a 24-hour course. It is a lifetime course.”

“It’s not a matter of just playing notes. It’s a matter of the feeling, the mood, the 'rasa'.”

“You have to be a good listener before you can be a good musician.”

“A raga is not a song. A raga is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement.”

“The sarod is my life, my soul.”

“Real music is not for wealth, not for honors or even the joys of the mind... but as a path for realization and salvation.”

“Indian classical music is the only religion that proves the existence of God.”

“My father told me, 'If you want to play the sarod, you have to give your life to it.'”