THE SITAR

I play it in my own way, according to several styles that I have invented!

The sitar is a marvelous stringed instrument, acoustic, and soloist of traditional Indian music (which I discovered "by chance*" in real life) which is essentially played only one string at a time (except in the rhythmic passages): the main string, followed by three lower strings, then come three rhythmic strings closest to the body, finally below these strings raised by a bridge are thirteen "sympathetic" strings which prolong the notes and must be precisely tuned to the main notes of each "raga".

… Which is not synonymous with "piece" because the raga has a thousand faces but must be able to be recognized by everyone (understand by that: by an Indian rocked in classical or folk music!), it has characteristic features but also a part of improvisation in which the soul of the musician is expressed, in accordance with the energy of the moment and the place!

Learning such an instrument outside of the traditional master-disciple relationship is of course almost impossible... That's why my way of playing it is  far from the recordings of Indian virtuosos: I got down to this fabulous instrument as an autodidact after 2-3 very basic lessons from a teacher who hadn't even taught me how to tune it!!

I decided to one day make a strength of this absence of transmission! …

The sitar is only a few centuries old and it has  not badly evolved: moreover the vast majority of sitars recorded for decades and currently sold carry the mark of Ravi Shankar, to whom they owe several modifications of lutherie… which improved the brilliance of the sound in particular! 

It is a fragile instrument that requires great craftsmanship to complete it from a gourd (for the calabash)!  

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