Asadullah Khan, popularly known as Kaukub Khan was born in Lucknow. He learned music from his father Niyamatullah Khan and his elder brother Keramatullah Khan. A gifted performer and well known instrumentalist he was apt at playing several instruments: sarod, sitar, surbahar and banjo. Kaukub Khan was the principal of „Sangeet Sangha“ -a musical institution founded by Lady Pratibha and her husband Ashutosh Chowdhury. Kaukub Khan was instrumental at introducing the -then fairly novel instrument- sarod to Bengal. Asadullah and Keramtullah Khan were invited to perform at the Wembley exhibition in England in 1911. Earlier he and his brother Keramtullah Khan, together with Motilal Nehru went to France and performed at the Paris world fair in 1900. They were the first Indian musicians to visit France. In transit Kaukub Khans sarod was damaged. In order to play his scheduled concerts in France he took the western Banjo and modified it in such a way to be able to play Raga music on it. Back home in India the Kaukub-Banjo became a huge success and all of his recordings were played on the Banjo. A picture of the Kaukub Banjo in the hands of Mukhtiar Ahmed Khan can be seen here. In total Kaukub Khan recorded three 78RPM discs with six Ragas: Bhoopali & Brindabani Sarang; Bhairavin & Zila; Manjh Khamaj & Pilu. Besides his son Waliullah Khan, Asadullah Khan also trained Sakhawat Hussain Khan, who married one of his guru Asadullah Khans daughters. Competent among Asadullah Khans non-family disciples were: Becha Chandra, Dhirendra Nath Bose, Jitendra Charan Guha (Gobarbabu), Jnanada Prasanna Mukherjee (Gobardanga), Hiralal Haldar (sitar), Kalidas Pal, Nanigopal Motilal (sitar), Satyendra Nath Mukherjee, Shivkumar Thakur (son of Raja S.M. Tagore), Harendra Krishna Sil (sitar & surbahar) and Sarat Chandra Singh. Kaukub Khan passed away on August 07, 1915.

A 1912 recording of a famous gat in Raga Bhairavin:

Bhairavin and Zila recorded in 1912 and transferred in 2023 from the original shellac-disc 78RPM record in posession of the Khan family:

This historic performance in Brindabani Sarang (an old version of the raag using only komal ni) reaches us from the collection of Mr. Rantideb Maitra via Kiran Naigas wonderful music channel „Pokri Poki“. The same gat has been recorded by Shafiqullah Khan, Yusuf Ali Khan and Irfan Khan:

Another share of Mr. Rantideb Maitra via Pokri Poki. Labeled as a recital in Bhopali but in fact it is Bhoop Kalyan. Note that Asadullah Khan was probably the first soloist to make it a point that his tabla accompanist is mentioned on the record label. During that era accompanists were usually not mentioned. Only that way we know it is Abani Babu. A tabla player from Murshidabad connected with Ata Khan.

More about the man and his time in part III of Markus Schlaffkes beautiful documentary „Soundtracks“: