Sarod
Encyclopedia
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
). The sarod is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic string
Sympathetic string
Sympathetic strings or resonance strings are auxiliary strings found on many Indian musical instruments, as well as some Western Baroque instruments and a variety of folk instruments...
s that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. It is a fretless instrument able to produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which are very important to Indian music.
Origins
The sarod is believed by some to have descended from the Afghan rubab, a similar instrument originating in Central Asia and AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
.
The name Sarod roughly translates to "beautiful sound" or "melody" in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
(which is one of the many languages spoken in Afghanistan). Although the sarod has been referred to as a "bass
Bass (instrument)
Bass describes musical instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles...
rubab" its pitch range is only slightly lower than that of the rubab. Lalmani Misra
Lalmani Misra
Lalmani Misra , M.A., Ph.D., D. Mus. , M.Mus. , B.Mus. , Dean & Head, Faculty of Music and Fine Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, was an eminent Indian classical musician known as much for his art as for his scholarship.-Initiation into music:Lalmani learnt Dhruvapada Dhamar in the...
opines in his Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya
Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya
Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya is a book written by Dr. Lalmani Misra. It was published under the Lokodya Granthmala series of Bharatiya Jnanpith, New Delhi. The first edition was published in 1973, the second in 2002...
that the sarod is a combination of the ancient chitra veena
Veena
Veena may refer to one of several Indian plucked instruments:With frets*Rudra veena, plucked string instrument used in Hindustani music*Saraswati veena, plucked string instrument used in Carnatic musicFretless...
, the medieval rubab and modern sursingar
Surasingar
The sursingar , sursringar or surshringar is a musical instrument from India. It is a lute-derived Sarod, except it is larger in size and produces a deeper sound. It is a distant descendant of the Saraswati Veena...
. There is also speculation that the oud
Oud
The oud is a pear-shaped stringed instrument commonly used in North African and Middle Eastern music. The modern oud and the European lute both descend from a common ancestor via diverging paths...
may be the origin of the sarod.
Among the many conflicting and contested histories of the Sarod, there is one that attributes its invention to the ancestors of the present-day Sarod maestro, Amjad Ali Khan. Amjad Ali Khan
Amjad Ali Khan
Amjad Ali Khan is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Khan was born into a musical family and has performed internationally since the 1960s...
’s ancestor Mohammad Hashmi Khan Bangash, a musician and horse trader, came to India with the Afghan rubab in the mid-18th century and became a court musician to the Maharajah of Rewa
Rewa, India
Rewa is formerly the capital of the princely state of Rewa and former state of Vindhya Pradesh in central India. It is an important city in the North Eastern part of Madhya Pradesh state of India bordering Allahabad, Mirzapur and Banda Districts of Uttar Pradesh and Satna and Sidhi Districts of...
(now in Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....
). It was his descendants, notably his grandson Ghulam Ali Khan Bangash, a court musician in Gwalior, who changed the rubab into the sarod we know today. A parallel theory credits descendants of Madar Khan, Niyamatullah Khan in particular, with the same innovation circa 1820. The sarod in its present recognisable form dates back to approximately 1820, when it started gaining recognition as a serious instrument in Rewa, Shahjahanpur
Shahjahanpur
Shahjahanpur is a municipal board, town and district headquarters of Shahjahanpur District in Uttar Pradesh, India.-History:During the reign of Shahjahan, Mughal forces demolished the city of Kant...
, Gwalior and Lucknow
Lucknow
Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
. In the 20th century, the sarod received some finishing touches from Allauddin Khan
Allauddin Khan
Allauddin Khan , was a Bengali sarodiya and multi-instrumentalist, composer and one of the most renowned music teachers of the 20th Century in Indian classical music.In 1935, he toured Europe, along with Uday Shankar's ballet troupe, and later also worked at his...
, the performer-pedagogue from Maihar
Maihar
Maihar is a city and a municipality in Satna district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Maihar is known for the temple of revered mother goddess Sharda situated on Trikuta hill of Maihar.- Origin :...
best known as Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
and Ali Akbar Khan
Ali Akbar Khan
Ali Akbar Khan , often referred to as Khansahib or by the title Ustad , was a Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod...
's guru
Guru
A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
.
Design
Gharana
In Hindustani music, a gharānā is a system of social organization linking musicians or dancers by lineage or apprenticeship, and by adherence to a particular musical style. A gharana also indicates a comprehensive musicological ideology. This ideology sometimes changes substantially from one...
) of playing. There are three distinguishable types, discussed below.
The conventional sarod is an 20-25-stringed
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
lute-like instrument – four to five main strings used for playing the melody, one or two drone strings, two chikari strings and nine to eleven sympathetic string
Sympathetic string
Sympathetic strings or resonance strings are auxiliary strings found on many Indian musical instruments, as well as some Western Baroque instruments and a variety of folk instruments...
s. The design of this early model is generally credited to Niyamatullah Khan of the Lucknow Gharana as well as Ghulam Ali Khan of the Gwalior-Bangash Gharana. Among the contemporary sarod players, this basic design is kept intact by two streams of sarod playing. Amjad Ali Khan and his disciples play this model, as do the followers of Radhika Mohan Maitra. Both Amjad Ali Khan and Buddhadev Dasgupta have introduced minor changes to their respective instruments which have become the design templates for their followers. Both musicians use sarods made of teak wood, with the playing face covered with goat skin. Buddhadev Dasgupta prefers a polished stainless steel fingerboard for the ease of maintenance while Amjad Ali Khan uses the conventional chrome or nickel-plated cast steel fingerboard. Visually, the two variants are similar, with six pegs in the main pegbox, two rounded chikari pegs and 11 (Amjad) to 15 (Buddhadev) sympathetic strings. The descendants of Niyamatullah Khan (namely Irfan Khan and Ghulfam Khan) also play similar instruments. The followers of Radhika Mohan Maitra still carry the second resonator on their sarods. Amjad Ali Khan and his followers have rejected the resonator altogether. These instruments are typically tuned to B, which is the traditional setting.
Two of the earliest sarods are still in concert circulation. These are the sarods built for Niyamatullah Khan (c. 1840) and for Murad Ali Khan (c. 1860). Both have seen extensive use for over five generations, and are in perfect playing condition. As a result of the resurgence of these two early prototypes, the theories that proclaim the 20th-century variants to represent the zenith of sarod design, face a serious and credible challenge. The Murad Ali sarod, in particular, has acoustic sustainability and projection that surpasses those of modern variants by a considerable margin. On this sarod, it is possible to sustain meends of up to ten whole tones on one string, with just one downward stroke.
Another type is that designed by Allauddin Khan
Allauddin Khan
Allauddin Khan , was a Bengali sarodiya and multi-instrumentalist, composer and one of the most renowned music teachers of the 20th Century in Indian classical music.In 1935, he toured Europe, along with Uday Shankar's ballet troupe, and later also worked at his...
and his brother Ayet Ali Khan. This instrument, referred to by David Trasoff (Trasoff, 2000) as the 1934 Maihar Prototype, is larger and longer than the conventional instrument, though the fingerboard is identical to the traditional sarod described above. This instrument has 25 strings in all. These include four main strings, four jod strings (tuned to Ni or Dha, R/r, G/g and Sa respectively), two chikari strings (tuned to Sa of the upper octave) and fifteen tarab strings. The main strings are tuned to Ma ("fa"), Sa ("do"), lower Pa ("so") and lower Sa, giving the instrument a range of three octaves. The Maihar sarod lends itself extremely well to the presentation of alap with the four jod strings providing a backdrop for the ambiance of the raga. This variant is, however, not conducive to the performance of clean right-hand picking on individual strings. The instrument is typically tuned to C.
Sarod strings are made either of steel or phosphor bronze
Phosphor bronze
Phosphor bronze is an alloy of copper with 3.5 to 10% of tin and a significant phosphorus content of up to 1%. The phosphorus is added as deoxidizing agent during melting....
. Most contemporary sarod players use Roslau, Schaff or Precision brand music wire. The strings are plucked with a triangular plectrum
Plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, and is a separate tool held in the player's hand...
(java) made of polished coconut
Coconut
The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is a member of the family Arecaceae . It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word...
shell, ebony, DelrinTM or other such materials.
Playing
The lack of frets and the tensionTension (mechanics)
In physics, tension is the magnitude of the pulling force exerted by a string, cable, chain, or similar object on another object. It is the opposite of compression. As tension is the magnitude of a force, it is measured in newtons and is always measured parallel to the string on which it applies...
of the strings make the sarod a very demanding instrument to play, as the strings must be pressed hard against the fingerboard.
There are two approaches to stopping the strings of the sarod. One involves using the tip of one's fingernails to stop the strings, and the other uses a combination of the nail and the fingertip to stop the strings against the fingerboard.
Fingering techniques and how they are taught depends largely on the personal preferences of musicians rather than on the basis of school affiliation. Radhika Mohan Maitra, for example, used the index, middle and ring finger of his left hand to stop the string, just like followers of Allauddin Khan do. Maitra, however, made much more extensive use of the third fingernail for slides and hammers. Amjad Ali Khan, while a member of approximately the same stylistic school as Radhika Mohan, prefers to use just the index and middle fingers of his left hand. Amjad Ali is, however, pictured circa 1960 playing with all three fingers.
Notable sarodiyas
- Aashish KhanAashish KhanAashish Khan Debsharma is an eminent Indian classical musician, known for his virtuosity on the Sarod. He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2006 in the 'Best World Music' category for his album "Golden Strings of the Sarode"...
(b. 1939) - Ali Akbar KhanAli Akbar KhanAli Akbar Khan , often referred to as Khansahib or by the title Ustad , was a Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod...
(1922–2009) - Allaudin Khan (1880–1972)
- Amjad Ali KhanAmjad Ali KhanAmjad Ali Khan is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Khan was born into a musical family and has performed internationally since the 1960s...
(b. 1945) - Gurdev SinghGurdev SinghSardar Gurdev Singh Kullar is a former Indian field hockey player, originally from Sansarpur, who now lives with his family in Leeds, England. He was part of the Indian field hockey team at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, which won the gold medal...
(b. 1948) - Buddhadev Das GuptaBuddhadev Das GuptaBuddhadev Das Gupta is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Das Gupta resides in Kolkata, India. He is one of the artists featured in Nimbus Records's The Raga Guide...
(b. 1933) - Hafiz Ali KhanHafiz Ali KhanHafiz Ali Khan was an Indian Sarod player. He was a tall figure in twentieth-century sarod music. A fifth-generation descendant of the famous Bangash Gharana of sarod players, Hafiz Ali was known for the lyrical beauty of his music and the crystal-clear tone of his strokes...
(1888–1972) - Shahadat Hossain KhanShahadat Hossain KhanUstad Shahadat Hossain Khan was born in Comilla, Bangladesh, on July 1958. He is the only son of Ustad Abed Hossain Khan. He comes of a family of great musicians of the sub-continent...
(b. 1958) - Sharan Rani Backliwal (1929–2008)
- Radhika Mohan MaitraRadhika Mohan MaitraRadhika Mohan Maitra was an Indian sarod player. Maitra was considered an influential figure in 20th century sarod playing and received the title Sangeetacharya.-Early life and background:...
(1917–1981) - Vasant RaiVasant RaiVasant Rai was one of world's most acclaimed performers of Indian music and virtuoso of the Indo/Persian/Afghan instrument Sarod.-Personal life and education:Rai was born in Unjha, Kutch, Gujarat and studied music in India...
(1942–1985) - Amaan Ali KhanAmaan Ali KhanAmaan Ali Khan is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Khan is the son of Amjad Ali Khan and often performs with his younger brother Ayaan Ali Khan, with whom he hosted the music talent show Sa Re Ga Ma.-External links:...
(b. 1977) - Anupam ShobhakarAnupam ShobhakarAnupam Shobhakar, born Anupam Shovakar, is an Indian musician, composer, instrumentalist, record producer, and classically trained sarodist currently living in Brooklyn, New York. He has released three World Fusion albums, and one classical Indian music album. He has performed live around the world...
(b. 1979) - Arnab ChakrabartyArnab ChakrabartyArnab Chakrabarty is a Hindustani classical musician and sarod player.-Early life and education:Arnab Chakrabarty grew up in Mumbai, where his father was a professor of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology...
- Asad QizilbashAsad Qizilbash-Biography:Asad was born in 1963 to the famous violinist K.H. Qizilbash, who introduced many talented Pakistani musicians to the world, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan among others....
– Pakistan - Ayaan Ali KhanAyaan Ali KhanAyaan Ali Khan is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Khan is the son of Amjad Ali Khan and often performs with his older brother Amaan Ali Khan, with whom he hosted the music talent show Sa Re Ga Ma...
(b. 1979) - Biswajit Roy ChowdhuryBiswajit Roy ChowdhuryPandit Biswajit Roy Chowdhury was born in 1956, in Deogarh, Chowdhury was initiated into music by his father Shri Ranajit Roy Chowdhary, who was teacher of chemistry by profession but, more importantly, a serious Sarod player trained under the Late Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan and others...
(b. 1956) - Pradeep BarotPradeep BarotPradeep Barot is a sarod maestro based in Bombay, India. Born to a gifted clarionet player Mohan lal Barot, Pradeep from a young age displayed immense musical talent....
- Rajeev TaranathRajeev TaranathRajeev Taranath is an Indian classical musician who plays the sarod. Taranath is a disciple of Ali Akbar Khan.-Career:...
(b. 1932) - Tejendra MajumdarTejendra MajumdarTejendra Narayan Majumdar is an Indian sarod player and pupil of Bahadur Khan. Tejendra Narayan Majumdar is one of the most popular and celebrated modern sarod players.-Training:...
(b. 1961) - Vikash MaharajVikash MaharajPandit Vikash Maharaj is a Hindustani musician known for his performances on the Sarod.He is son of great Tabla player Pandit Nanhku Maharaj and nephew of Pandit Kishan Maharaj. He started his early education from Pandit Rajesh Chandra Moitra, a disciple of Ustad Baba Allauddin Khan Saheb and...
(b. 1957) - Wajahat KhanWajahat KhanWajahat Khan is an Indian sarod player who has earned international acclaim since 1977. He is the third son of Imrat Khan, nephew of Vilayat Khan and a member of the multi-generational musical Khan family which founded the Imdadkhani Gharana...
See also
- SitarSitarThe 'Tablaman' is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages...
- Plucked string instrumentPlucked string instrumentPlucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such as way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate...
- Hindustani classical musicHindustani classical musicHindustani classical music is the Hindustani or North Indian style of Indian classical music found throughout the northern Indian subcontinent. The style is sometimes called North Indian Classical Music or Shāstriya Sangeet...
- Music of IndiaMusic of IndiaThe music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, classical music and R&B. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and developed over several eras. It remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as...
- String instruments