Al Gromer Khan

Al Gromer Khan is a German-born sitar player and composer whose music spans the multiple genres of ambient, new age, world and electronica. He is author of 3 novels and author of National-Radio documentaries and features about music since more than 25 years and works as a visual artist. Al Gromer Khan was awarded the RABINDRANATH TAGORE CULTURAL PRIZE 2015 for his lifetime achievement as musician/performer on sitar and surbahar of the highest order, composer, writer and visual artist by the Indo-German Society.

Al Gromer Khan was born on April 8, 1946 at Frauenzell in the alpine foothills of Bavaria between Lake Constance and Munich.

During his college time he founded a skiffle-group became a jazzguitarist and left his home to become a jazz musician and a beat poet, spending time in London, Tangier and India.

Gromer Khan claims that he was drawn to the "mysteries of sound", from early childhood, be it the sound of the bells worn by the Bavarian cows grazing in the alpine meadows near his birthplace, or the "singing" telephone wires on the wind in the freezing Bavarian winters, and later American blues and country music, Indian stringed instruments, the drums of North Africa. Gromer Khan claims to have rejected the academic or diplomatic careers his parents expected him to take up.

The 1960s found a twenty-something Al Gromer in London where he took part in a number of creative experiments which were to have a lasting influence on him. According to Gromer Khan, the Prince Tiane na Champassak of Laos introduced him to tantric art and pop star Marc Bolan invited him to join in the all-night jam sessions he hosted. He explored psycho-acoustic phenomena with film director Mike Figgis, and saxophonist Ronnie Scott of Ronnie Scott's Jazzclub, who introduced Al to Ben Webster, Max Roach and Miles Davis, while Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam), gave him a taste for English poetry. At times he attended a London art school.

There is no doubt that Gromer Khan's creative encounters during the 1960s deeply formed his musical taste and style; however, Gromer’s ultimate musical awakening came at a recital by sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan in Westminster Abbey 1968. Gromer Khan professes to have been so moved by the performance that he instantly decided to devote his life to the study of the sitar. He went to India, where he was to find a powerful teacher in Vilayat Khan's brother, Ustad Imrat Khan. Gromer Khan remained in India for the next three years, speed-learning his instrument at the feet of his guru. He returned to Bavaria in 1973, already an accomplished sitarist.

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