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Sitar
The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in 19th-century India. Khusrau Khan, an 18th century figure of Mughal Empire has been identified by modern scholarship as the originator of Sitar. According to most historians he developed sitar from setar, an Iranian instrument of Abbasid or Safavid origin. Another view supported by a minority of scholars is that Khusrau Khan developed it from ''Veena''. Used widely throughout the Indian subcontinent, the sitar became popularly known in the wider world through the works of Ravi Shankar, beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1960s, a short-lived trend arose for the use of the sitar in Western popular music, with the instrument appearing on tracks by bands such as the Beatles, the Doors, the Rolling Stones and others. Etymol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. Shankar was born to a Bengali Brahmin family in India, and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the ''Apu Trilogy'' by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and incr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sitar In Popular Music
While the sitar had earlier been used in jazz and Indian film music, it was from the 1960s onwards that various pop artists in the Western world began to experiment with incorporating the sitar, a classical Indian stringed instrument, within their compositions. Early uses in Western pop music Before the sitar was first used on a Western pop recording, the instrument's drone had been imitated on electric guitar by the Kinks on their 1965 single "See My Friends". Another English band, the Yardbirds, hired a sitar player to play the main riff on their song "Heart Full of Soul", but the group subsequently re-recorded the track without a sitar part. The first pop release to feature sitar was instead "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", issued on the Beatles' ''Rubber Soul'' album in December 1965. With this sitar part, George Harrison became the first Western musician to play an Indian instrument on a commercial recording. Harrison is recognised as having introduced the sitar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veena
The ''veena'', also spelled ''vina'' ( sa, वीणा IAST: vīṇā), comprises various chordophone instruments from the Indian subcontinent. Ancient musical instruments evolved into many variations, such as lutes, zithers and arched harps.Vina: Musical Instrument Encyclopædia Britannica (2010) The many regional designs have different names such as the ''Rudra veena'', the ''Saraswati veena'', the ''Vichitra veena'' and others. The North Indian ''rudra veena'', used in Hindustani classical music, is a stick zither. About 3.5 to 4 feet (1 to 1.2 meters) long to fit the measurements of the musician, it has a hollow body and two large resonating gourds under each end. It has four main strings which are melodic, and three auxiliary drone strings. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sitarla
is a Japanese musician, known primarily for his work with Flower Travellin' Band and for creating the sitarla instrument. A guitarist and sitar player for nearly forty years, he now exclusively plays the sitarla, an instrument he invented in 2000 that combines aspects of a sitar with an electric guitar. Guitarists Akira Takasaki, Rolly, and Mikael Åkerfeldt have cited him as an influence. Career Ishima started playing guitar at 19, at the behest of a friend who wanted to be in a band. His first group was in his native Sapporo shortly after graduating high school. He moved to Tokyo and formed the group sounds band The Beavers in 1966, who had released four albums and one single but had not had major success. Ishima began playing sitar at 24, after researching Gábor Szabó at the suggestion of a woman and learning that the jazz guitarist also played this instrument he had never heard of. He taught himself from Ravi Shankar's 1968 book ''My Music, My Life'', looking up the Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surbahar
''Surbahar'' (; ) sometimes known as bass sitar, is a plucked string instrument used in the Hindustani classical music of the Indian subcontinent. It is closely related to the sitar, but has a lower pitch. Depending on the instrument's size, it is usually pitched two to five whole steps below the standard sitar. Overview The surbahar is over 130 cm (51 inches). It uses a dried gourd as a resonator, and has a neck with very wide frets, which allow a glissando or "meend" of as much as an octave on the same fret through the method of pulling. The neck is made out of ''toona'', or mahogany wood. It has 3-4 rhythm strings (''chikari''), four playing strings (the broadest 1 mm), and 10 to 11 sympathetic strings. There are two bridges; the playable strings pass over the greater bridge, which is connected to the tabli with small legs, which are glued in place. The sympathetic strings pass over the smaller bridge which is directly glued on the tabli. The bridges have a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Setar
A setar ( fa, سهتار, ) is a stringed instrument, a type of lute used in Persian traditional music, played solo or accompanying voice. It is a member of the tanbur family of long-necked lutes with a range of more than two and a half octaves. Originally a three stringed instrument, a fourth string was added by the mid 19th century. It is played with the index finger of the right hand. It has been speculated that the setar originated in Persia by the 9th century C.E. A more conservative estimate says "it originated in the 15th century, or even earlier." Although related to the tanbur, in recent centuries, the setar has evolved so that, musically, it more closely resembles the tar, both in tuning and playing style. Etymology According to Curt Sachs, Persians chose to name their lutes around the word ''tar'', meaning string, combined with a word for the number of strings. Du + tar is the 2-stringed dutār, se + tar is the 3-stringed setār, čartar (4 strings), pančtār ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Setar
A setar ( fa, سهتار, ) is a stringed instrument, a type of lute used in Persian traditional music, played solo or accompanying voice. It is a member of the tanbur family of long-necked lutes with a range of more than two and a half octaves. Originally a three stringed instrument, a fourth string was added by the mid 19th century. It is played with the index finger of the right hand. It has been speculated that the setar originated in Persia by the 9th century C.E. A more conservative estimate says "it originated in the 15th century, or even earlier." Although related to the tanbur, in recent centuries, the setar has evolved so that, musically, it more closely resembles the tar, both in tuning and playing style. Etymology According to Curt Sachs, Persians chose to name their lutes around the word ''tar'', meaning string, combined with a word for the number of strings. Du + tar is the 2-stringed dutār, se + tar is the 3-stringed setār, čartar (4 strings), pančtār ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sursingar
The sursingar (IAST: ), sursringar or surshringar (Sringara: Pleasure in Sanskrit), is a musical instrument originating from the Indian subcontinent having many similarities with the sarod. It is larger than the sarod and produces a deeper sound. It precedes the sarod chronologically. In Dhrupad style, it was used as a solo instrument in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is regarded as a further development of the Dhrupad-Rabab that has more or less disappeared today. Its neck has a metal fingerboard and the steel and bronze strings are played with a metal pick, while the bridge is made of a flat horn. It has two resonant boxes; the main box is made from a cut gourd, on which a wooden cover is attached.Ram Avtar Vir. Musical Instruments of India. Construction and Playing style The main body is made of wood and not leather (the material used in earlier instruments). The sound producing mechanism of the instrument is formed by a gourd. The gourd is attached to a hollow wooden han ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarod
The sarod is a stringed instrument, used in Hindustani music on the Indian subcontinent. Along with the sitar, it is among the most popular and prominent instruments. It is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. A fretless instrument, it can produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which are important in Indian music. Origins The word sarod, which comes from the Persian, is much older than the Indian musical instrument. It can be traced back to ''sorūd'' meaning "song", "melody", "hymn" and further to the Persian verb ''sorūdan'', which correspondingly means "to sing", "to play a musical instrument", but also means "to compose". Alternatively, the shahrud may have given its name to the sarod. The Persian word šāh-rūd is made up of ''šāh'' (shah or king) and ''rūd'' (string). Many scholars of Indi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the dynasty and the empire itself became indisputably Indian. The interests and futures of all concerned were in India, not in ancestral homelands in the Middle East or Central Asia. Furthermore, the Mughal empire emerged from the Indian historical experience. It was the end product of a millennium of Muslim conquest, colonization, and state-building in the Indian subcontinent." For some two hundred years, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus river basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India. Quote: "The realm so defined and governed was a vast territory of some , rang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanbur
The term ''Tanbur'' ( fa, تنبور, ) can refer to various long-necked string instruments originating in Mesopotamia, Southern or Central Asia. According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', "terminology presents a complicated situation. Nowadays the term tanbur (or tambur) is applied to a variety of distinct and related long-necked lutes used in art and folk traditions. Similar or identical instruments are also known by other terms." These instruments are used in the traditional music of Iran, India, Kurdistan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan (especially Avar community), Pakistan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Origins Tanburs have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BC. Three figurines have been found in Susa that belong to 1500 BC, and in hands of one of them is a tanbur-like instrument. Also an image on the rocks near Mosul that belong to about 1000 B shows tanbur players. Playing the tan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plucked Stringed Instrument
Plucked 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 a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate. Plucking can be done with either a finger or a plectrum. Most plucked string instruments belong to the lute family (such as guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, banjo, balalaika, sitar, pipa, etc.), which generally consist of a resonating body, and a neck; the strings run along the neck and can be stopped at different pitches. The zither family (including the Qanún/kanun, autoharp, kantele, gusli, kannel, kankles, kokles, koto, guqin, gu zheng and many others) does not have a neck, and the strings are stretched across the soundboard. In the harp family (including the lyre), the strings are perpendicular to the soundboard and do not run across it. The harpsichord does not fit any of these categories but is also a plucked string instrument, as its s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
