Part of Hindustani Classical
Hindustani classical instrumental music is North Indian raga music played on instruments such as sitar, sarod, sarangi, bansuri and tabla, each with its own technique.
Historical Timeline
Allyn Miner cites S. M. Tagore's Yantra Kosha of 1875, which places the surbahar's introduction about fifty years earlier and credits Ghulam Muhammad of Lucknow. Miner reads this as about 1825 and describes Ghulam Muhammad as a disciple of Umrao Khan, a Lucknow player of the bin, or rudra veena. Other accounts credit Umrao Khan himself, or Sahabdad Khan of the Etawah (Imdadkhani) gharana, and Miner allows that Sahabdad Khan may have played a part.
Writers of the period treated the instrument as an enlarged sitar. Scholars see it as a way to carry bin-style alap on a sitar-type instrument, and its deep sustain and wide pulls suited that music. After 1856 Ghulam Muhammad's son Sajjad Muhammad taught sitar and surbahar at Matiyaburj near Calcutta, home of the nawab Wajid Ali Shah. In the Etawah line, Imdad Khan, best known as a sitarist, also played surbahar in a dhrupad style. Tagore called the surbahar well known in 1875; C. R. Day, writing on southern India in 1891, found it rather uncommon.
Akademi honours Wahid Khan
The Sangeet Natak Akademi honoured Wahid Khan, born at Etawah in 1895, for Hindustani instrumental music. Its citation records that he learnt sitar and surbahar from his father, Imdad Khan, and credits him with mastery of the family's surbahar technique.
Music Academy lecture-demonstration
At the Music Academy, Madras, Nilaufar Khan opened the day with a talk and demonstration on the surbahar. She covered slow alap, an octave pulled on one fret, jod and jhala, and closed with Nata Bhairavi.
Akademi Award headed Surbahar
Annapurna Devi received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Hindustani instrumental music on the surbahar in 1991. Born in Maihar and trained by her father, Allauddin Khan, she is best known as a surbahar player.
A surbahar duet with pakhawaj
Pushpraj Koshti, the Sangeet Natak Akademi's 2011 surbahar awardee, played a surbahar duet with Bhusan Koshti and pakhawaj at the Vivekananda Music Festival, in Vivekananda Hall at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Gol Park, Kolkata.
Playing Techniques
How it differs from the sitar
Compared with the sitar, the surbahar has a longer, wider neck and thicker strings. Allyn Miner and the maker Toss Levy describe a flat-cut gourd of the kachua type, against the rounder gourd of most sitars. C. R. Day, writing in 1891, described a wooden body with a flat back and called its tone rich and mellow, close to that of the vina.
David Courtney, a practitioner, finds tuning two or three steps below the sitar common. He also describes setting the main playing string to a lower Sa instead of Ma, so the instrument sounds about an octave below a sitar. Day reported the same tuning as an ordinary sitar.
Most surbahars carry chikari, high drone strings struck for rhythm, and sympathetic strings that ring without being plucked. String counts differ from maker to maker. A 2011 study by Lars-Christian Koch, published by the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, examines how the Kanailal & Brother workshop in Kolkata builds sitars and surbahars.
Meend at one fret
On the surbahar, a player makes meend mainly by pulling the string sideways across a fret. Practitioners report glides of up to an octave within one fret, so a complex phrase can sit on one or two frets. The right hand strikes with a mizrab, a wire plectrum.
Alap, jor and jhala
A recital moves from alap to jor, where a steady pulse emerges, then to jhala, where some players add rhythm on the chikari. Some surbahar players switch to sitar for composed sections and jhala, and one practitioner notes that long sustain can blur fast strokes. Others play both on the surbahar. Many performances use no percussion; some add pakhawaj.
Journey to Mastery
Follow this structured journey to master this discipline
Setup and first sounds
Hear the end of a meend
Shape a short alap phrase
Introduce jor and pulse
Listen, record and review
Past Performances
Featured Artists
Renowned performers of this discipline