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This is the most complete book on any Indian instrument.

The sarangi is the main bowed instrument of Hindustani music. It has three gut melody strings that are stopped by the left-hand cuticles or the skin above the nails. Around 36 sympathetic strings give a hauntings echo. Traditionally the sarangi’s public role has been to provide melodic accompaniment for vocal music, but its players have always practised and performed solo sarangi in their homes and at musicians’ gatherings. The constraints posed by the sarangi’s unusual construction and technique have given birth to a unique instrumental manifestation of vocal music that has never before been examined in a musicological work.

This beautifully illustrated book attempts to answer these questions: What is sarangi music? In what ways does it reflect or differ from the vocal music on which it is based? In what ways do the unique features of the sarangi and its technique affect its capacity to emulate vocal music? The approach is empirical, supported by extensive sargam transcription and analysis of video-recorded music and informed by the author’s fifty years of experience as a student, performer and teacher of the sarangi and Hindustani vocal music. The discussion is supplemented by 170 online video files and 555 audio examples. Most of these materials are supplied in both normal-speed and half-speed versions.