SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 10 of 99

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Ali Akbar Khan was associated with which of the following gharanas?

(a)Kirana gharana
(b)Gwalior gharana
(c)Agra gharana
(d)Maihar gharana

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Ali Akbar Khan was a sarod player of the Maihar gharana, the instrumental lineage built by his father and teacher Ustad Allauddin Khan at Maihar in Madhya Pradesh.

The instrument is the tell. Maihar is the school that produced instrumentalists: Allauddin Khan taught Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, Annapurna Devi on surbahar and Ravi Shankar on sitar.

Kirana, Gwalior and Agra are khayal singing gharanas, so a sarod player does not belong to any of them.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Kirana gharana — Kirana gharana is a khayal vocal tradition associated with Abdul Karim Khan and later with Gangubai Hangal and Bhimsen Joshi. A singing school, not a sarod lineage.
(b)
Gwalior gharana — Gwalior gharana is the oldest of the khayal vocal gharanas. Its subject is the voice, so it cannot be the home of a sarod player.
(c)
Agra gharana — Agra gharana is another khayal vocal tradition, known for its dhrupad-influenced style. Vocal again, not instrumental.

Concept

A gharana is a lineage of style handed from teacher to pupil, usually named for the place where it settled. The split that decides this one is vocal against instrumental.

Maihar is the instrumental one in this set. Allauddin Khan settled and taught at Maihar in the princely state of that name.

His line carried Hindustani instrumental music abroad: Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee on sitar, Annapurna Devi on surbahar.

Two names from one family show up in these lists — Allauddin Khan the teacher and Ali Akbar Khan his son. Both are Maihar, so answer for the person the stem actually names.

Key facts

Ali Akbar Khan was a sarod player of the Maihar gharana.
Ustad Allauddin Khan, Ali Akbar Khan's father and teacher, was the central figure of the Maihar gharana.
Maihar is in Madhya Pradesh.
Kirana, Gwalior and Agra are khayal vocal gharanas.

Study next

Khayal vocal gharanas: Gwalior, Agra, Kirana, Jaipur-Atrauli, Rampur-SahaswanKathak gharanas: Lucknow, Jaipur, Banaras and RaigarhInstrumentalists matched to their instruments: sarod, sitar, surbahar, sarangi

Common traps

Treating every gharana as a vocal school and matching an instrumentalist to one at random.
Reaching for Kirana because it is the most familiar gharana name, without checking that it is a vocal one.

Gharana identification is asked plainly across the 2024 banks. At 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, General Awareness Q.17 Gangubai Hangal and Prabha Atre are keyed to Kirana, and at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.1 Gangubai Hangal's gharana is asked again.

At 25 Sep 2024, 9:00, General Awareness Q.11 the question moves to Kathak and asks which gharana Ishwari Prasad introduced, keyed to Lucknow. Learn the artist-to-gharana pairs on both the vocal and the instrumental side.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.