Sārangī: India musical instrument

The sārangī is a bowed, short-necked string musical instrument from the south Asia that has its origin from the gandarbha folk musical instruments. The musical instrument is said to be analogous to the human voice. The instrument is able to imitate the vocal ornament like the gamakus and the meend. 

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There are various versions for the meaning of the name of the instrument. The name sārangī is the combination of two sankrit words, which are the ‘saar’ meaning summary and the ‘ang’ meaning different patterns of playing musical instrument, hence meaning the musical instrument that can summarize every method of music or performance.

The musical instrument, according to some musicians is a combination of two words; the ‘seh’ meaning three and ‘rangi’ meaning colored, corrupted as sārangī. The musical instrument now enjoys the status of a solo classical musical instrument because of the single-handed effort of Ram Narayan. There is a distinction to the fingering method that was used by Ram Narayan. It varies from the standard form of fingering as to when the player shifts from the index finger to the middle finger of the hand. By Ram Narayan’s own admission, it is a non-standard way of playing the instrument, and under any other circumstance, we would reject this as being idiosyncratic pattern. Meanwhile Ram is seen as the best in the 20^th century for his proficiency and influence over the whole field of the sārangī.

Popular players of the musical instrument are; Mamman khan, Nathu Khan, Shakoor Khan, Sagiruddin Khan, Hanuman Prasad Mishra, Abdul Lateef Khan,Ustad Majid Khan,Ustad Basheer Khan,Ustad Mahmood Khan,Ustad Sabri Khan and Sultan Khan.

The repertoire of the player of the instrument is very closely related traditionally to the vocal music. However, a concert with a solo sārangī as the basic instrument will perhaps include a full-scale raag presentation with a massive alap in cumulative intensity and many compositions in cumulative tempi known as bandish. As such the srangi is on average with other musical instruments like sitar, sarod and the bansuri.

The melodies from the musical instrument are often vocal music. It is rare to see a player of the musical instrument who does not know the word of many classical make ups.  The words are often mentally present while they are playing, and performance normally almost adheres to the conventions of vocal playing including the organizational structure of the music, the kind of elaboration, the tempo of the music, the relationship between the sound and silence, as well as the presentation of thumri and khyal compositions. The vocal quality of the musical instrument is in a quite different genre.

Also the sārangī is a traditional stringed musical instrument of Nepal, mainly played by the Gain ethnic group or the Gandarbha ethnic group, but the form and repertoire of the musical instrument is more towards the folk music as likened to the heavy and classical form of Indian Repertoire.

The musical instrument is manufactured from a single block of tun wood. The sārangī has a shape that is like the box, having three hollow chambers; the pet, which is the stomach of the instrument, the chaati, which is the chest and the magaj, which is the brain of the instrument. The musical instrument is about 2 feet long and about 6 inches wide, but can differ as there are smaller and larger versions of the musical instrument. The lower resonance chamber of the instrument is covered with the use of a parchment produced out of goat skin on which a strip of thick leather is positioned around the waist that backs up the elephant-shaped bridge of the musical instrument that is often manufactured of camel bone or the bone of buffalo. The bridge of the musical instrument supports the heavy pressure of about 35 to 37 sympathetic steel brass strings and three basic gut strings that pass through the bridge of the instrument. The three basic playing strings are bowed with a huge horsehair bow and stopped with the nails of the finger instead of the finger-tip, it can also be stopped with cuticles or surrounding flesh of the player. The neck of the sārangī has ivory platform on which the fingers of the hand slide. The remaining strings of the instrument are resonance strings or tarabs, that are between 35 to 37, divided into four choirs having 2 sets of pegs; one on the top and the other on the right. A chromatically tuned row of 15 tarabs are found on the inside and on the right a diatonic row of 9 tarabs is found, each including a full octave with 1 to 3 extra notes above or beneath that. Two more set of tarabs lie between these inner tarabs and the main playing strings on either side, with 5 to 6 strings on the right set and 6 to 7 strings on the left set. The strings pass from the main bridge of the instrument over to two small flat and wide bridges that are like the table through the additional bridge towards the 2^nd peg that is set on top of the musical instrument. These strings are tuned to crucial tones of the raga. A well-tuned sārangī will hum and cry and the sound of the instrument will be like melodious meowing, with tones performed on the main strings of the instrument eliciting resonance that is like echo. Few players of the musical instrument use strings produced from the intestines of goats. The musical instrument can also be of different types.