Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma from
Jammu, is the man who brought santoor, a Kashmiri folk instrument of Sufiana music,
out of the valley and into national and international prominence.
Actually the credit also goes to his father Pandit Umadutt Sharma, a music teacher and regular
vocalist on the AIR stations of Jammu and Srinagar. Umadutt started training his
son in vocals and tabla when the boy was five. But later he initiated
Shiv Kumar into santoor which, he thought, deserved to be brought out of
isolation in the valley.Though Umadutt never played the santoor he had done his own studies
on the instrument. The father played guru to his son with the hope that
he would carry the santoor parampara to the world stage.
Shiv Kumar started
out at the AIR in Jammu and Srinagar but the reach was limited to the state. The
budding star got his first major breakthrough when he performed at the Haridas
Sangeeth Sammelan in Mumbai in 1955. Both the artiste and the instrument had
arrived on the national scene.
Before moving ahead Shiv Kumar worked to
solve the few problems that the santoor had. One was the staccato notes produced
by the wooden mallets used to tap the 100-stringed instrument. Another was that
the notes could not be elongated. Shiv Kumar changed the 25 'bridges' of four
strings apiece to 33 'bridges'. Up went the number of notes. Gone was the tuning
system that repeated basic notes and restricted tune variations to 12. He also
used new strings to get a soft, soothing tone and overcame the problem of
staccato notes. "In the vocal tradition the meend (continuity) is very
important," says Sharma.
The sixties saw Sharma's 'new santoor'
gain popularity. His career hit a high note with the release of the album 'Call
of the Valley' by HMV. "It was a theme based on traditional ragas," he recalls.
The album also featured flute virtuoso Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pandit Brij
Bhushan Kabra, the man who introduced guitar to Indian classical music. "It is
still one of the best selling albums of HMV," he says with pride. Starting with
the HMV in 1961, Shiv Kumar is a sought after name in the music industry.
Sharma made his debut in the west in
1968 at a festival of Indian music in the US organised by the sitar maestro
Pandit Ravi Shankar. Today, thanks to Shiv Kumar, the santoor is a regular
feature at music festivals round the world.
The globe-trotting Pandit is often accompanied by his younger
son Rahul. The father-son duo had their debut at Oslo International Music
Festival in 1999. "It just happened that we played together," says Rahul,
who usually is an accompanist on the tanpura at his father's concerts. This year
they gave 16 performances together in the US and Canada before moving on to
Europe.
For the first time the father and son performed together in India on
Christmas day. "The santoor viraasat, as the duet was dubbed, was unique because playing two
santoors together is a much more enriching experience," said Vinod Raghavan of Banyan Tree,
the first corporate focusing on promoting traditional Indian performing arts.
Pandit Sharma has been passing on his skills
to the younger generations without charging a fee for the past
20 years. Rahul was his youngest shishya at the age of twelve. He
never forced his sons Rohit and Rahul to learn music. "The initiative came from
him," says the father who is happy that Rahul is following in his
footsteps. Among his shishyas who have earned a name for themselves are Nandu Muley, Harjinder
Singh, Kiran Pal and Dhananjay Dhaitankar. One of his disciples from Japan visits India
every year to train with her guru for two months.
Sharma, who turned 60 on January 13
2000, is also well known as a composer for Hindi movies including Silsila (with
Chaurasia), Chandini, Faasle, Vijay, Lamhe, Sahiba and Darr. Rahul, who assisted
his father in composing music for Chandini, Darr and Sahiba, however prefers to
concentrate on classical music. "Composing was my first love, but with the kind
of music that rules the film world I see no scope," says Rahul.
Rahul will have to break out
on his own. Playing in tandem is a torrid test.
As Pandit Sharma says, "A combination should be complementary
with complete understanding of each other's personal style and music." Of course
this goes for the instruments too. "The clarinet and santoor do not match; the
flute and santoor go together," says Sharma, who played with Chaurasia in the
'Call of the Valley'. After a gap of 29 years the two came together for 'The
Valley Recalls'.
The father and son play in perfect harmony.
Just as well, given that one is guru and the other is shishya.
Rahul was once hooked to western music and the Beatles were among his
favourites but slowly the in-house music seeped into his consciousness and so began his
tryst with the parampara of his father and grandfather. Rahul still trains for
three hours every day and listens to different ragas and musicians. He still has a
long way to go before he can aspire to match his father. But the
concert in Mumbai showed that Rahul is on his way.
