My teacher, the late great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, once explained the meaning of the name of the instrument I play, the same instrument that he played.
He said that the sarod, due to its power and expressiveness, had been named "the instrument that conquers or puts to flight 100 instruments".
He wasn't exaggerating.
When people think of Indian music, they usually think of the sitar. well, a sitar this definitely is not.
Follow me below the fold as I attempt to explain a little about this instrument.
I once saw some very old instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that were precursors to the Sarod.
They looked a little like a bucket with a little handle sticking out of the top side. The bucket was covered with skin, and the instrument had three strings. If you've ever seen a banjo uke you'd recognize one of these instruments immediately, except that it's a lot deeper. The strings were gut, and the effective length of the string was about 14 inches.
This instrument, which was very archaic, gave way to an instrument called the rabab, several versions of which exist. In Afghanistan, the rabab is the most well-known instrument. You can see and hear the Afghani rabab being played in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/...
a rabab usually has three gut (now usually nylon) melodic strings and many sympathetic strings, usually around 15. Instruments with the gut strings don't do long slides like the sitar or the sarod, which have steel strings.
The Sarod was fitted with steel strings sometime in the 17th century, and then with a steel fingerboard. It was finally modernized and turned into the instrument I play by my teacher's father, Ustad Allauddin Khan, who added more strings including long sympathetics, and reshaped the body for greater melodic power. The modern sarod compares to a sarod of 150 years ago much as a piano compares to a harpsichord.
Ustad Allauddin Khan, my teacher's father, created a revolution when he became the first "outsider" to inherit the tradition from a court musician. I'll tell his story in a further diary. It's an amazing saga, worthy of a whole book. As it is, his contribution to North Indian classical music, and now to the music of the whole world, is inestimable. However, it takes about 100 years for this kind of thing to catch up to the perception of the public.
When I got out of the Army, in 1966, I had already been exposed to Indian music, and I immediately got a sitar, which I played with great joy for about a year. Then a friend of mine introduced me to the sarod, and I fell in love immediately. Even though I had never played an instrument without frets, I found myself playing it instinctively. In the summer of 1967 I started studying with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, considered to be the greatest musician of 20th-century India. I continued to study with him until 1979, when I "graduated" from the Ali Akbar College of music. That's another saga, and more material for another diary.
Just so you can see what a Sarod is like, here is a link of myself playing the Sarod with my friend Greg Johnson playing the tabla, the main rhythm instrument of North Indian classical music.
http://www.youtube.com/...
I know, I know. Now that you've seen a Sarod, I know you want one. Who wouldn't? Haven't you ever dreamed of playing this instrument? I actually had a dream that I was playing this instrument while I was in the Army and had never seen one.