| "Strings of India" introduces you to the sheer range and power of 6 unique Indian string instruments: santoor, sitar, sarod, veena, carnatic, sarangi. | ” |
| “ | 1. Rahul Sharma, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma - Santoor (6:53) 2. Pandit Ravi Shankar - Sitar (2:45) 3. Ustad Amjad Ali Khan - Sarod (14:25) 4. Jayanthi Kumaresh - Veena (6:31) 5. Dr. L Subramaniam - Carnatic Violin (3:30) 6. Ustad Sultan Khan - Sarangi (7:47) |
Only about sixty years have passed since that momentous day when Pannalal Ghosh, the great pioneer of the bansuri, sat before an audience in Calcutta and presented a concert of classical music on his new self-designed flute, so changing the status of the bansuri (bamboo flute) forever; from a village instrument, the play-thing of Lord Krishna, into a concert instrument capable of conveying the full range of Hindustani classical music in all its finest nuances and subleties. By all accounts, the audience that day were not impressed, but the great Pannalal persevered and went on to become one of the legends of Indian music. A second generation of flute players soon followed, many fine musicians Ken Hunt in the Folk Roots music magazine writes of Ustad Sultan Khan's 1986 London performance: "He produced some truly spellbinding improvisations around a rainy season Raga Megh. Sultan Khan's artistry seemed to recognise few bounds as he deftly teased plaintive cries from the sarangi. His playing would be enough to break your heartstrings one moment, before he would release the tension with a burst of notes, like rays of sunshine brushing through the rain clouds". | ” |
