Real music is not for wealth, not for honours or even the joys of the mind... but as a path for realisation and salvation.

Three years later in December 1939 he accompanied Ravi Shankar on the sarod during the latter's debut performance at the same conference; this was the first of many jugalbandis (duets) between the two musicians. In 1997 Khan received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship the United States' highest honour in the traditional arts. He toured extensively until he was prevented from doing so by ill-health in the period prior to his death from renal failure.

Khan was nominated for five Grammy Awards and was accorded India's second highest civilian honor the Padma Vibhushan in 1989. Trained as a musician and instrumentalist by his father Allauddin Khan Khan first came to America in 1955 on the invitation of violinist Yehudi Menuhin and later settled in California. He has also won a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts's National Heritage Fellowship.