When sarodist Maestro Ali Akbar Khan's American born son, Alam, travels from California to India on his first concert tour without his ailing father, he wonders: How can I follow a legend? He knows his father would tell him, Don't worry, Play Like a Lion. Ali Akbar Khan, who introduced Indian classical music to the US at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1955, was The Emperor of Melody, a national treasure in India and the US, a Grammy nominee, and according to renowned master violinist Lord Yehudi Menuhin, possibly the greatest musician in the world. Carlos Santana said of Ali Akbar Khan that he was one of the few who like Bob Marley and Coltrane had the universal tone, a tone which shares the spirit of compassion of Desmond Tutu, Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.'Play Like a Lion' is Ali Akbar Khan seen through his son Alam's eyes. As Alam assumes the mantle of his father's musical legacy, he is learning that his ends are in his beginnings and that he must come to terms with playing an enduring old music in a disposable new age. 'Play Like a Lion' illuminates the Khan legacy featuring interviews with Carlos Santana, The Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart, blues slide guitarist Derek Trucks, sarodist Ustad Aashish Khan, tabla masters Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and Ustad Zakir Hussain. The documentary was shot in Kolkata, Mumbai, Rajasthan and the San Francisco Bay Area to a soundtrack of Ali Akbar Khan's music.
