It was surreal: Rahul Sharma

Take it from the man himself; the santoor makes its own special connect with water, “And then,” explains exponent Rahul Sharma, “the sound that permeates is purely magical.” No surprises then that the son of Pandit Shivkumar Sharma might find his own list of most enchanting experiences in that frame, the first being when he played the santoor on the Dal Lake in Kashmir and then quite recently in Egypt, on the River Nile — for his album Confluence III, Meeting by the Nile. 

Rahul’s tryst with the Middle Eastern country goes back a long way to when his father and he were the first Indians to play there and when he mentally decided he’d be back someday. Years later, a chance meeting with renowned oud player Georges Kazazian in Egypt and then in Paris at the Theatre de La Ville sealed that.

“I just mailed my compositions to Georges, he played a little on it and sent it back — it’s amazing what one can do with technology.”
The connect between the two was also plausible he says,
“Because music has a certain universality. While the santoor has 100 strings, the oud has 11 strings and the tonal quality is sharper.

In percussions you have the Egyptian darbuka and the doumbek is equivalent to the tabla,” he smiles, his hands lovingly lingering on the mallets of a santoor at his father’s home.

Finally being there was something else. “It was surreal,” he states. “we played in front of the Sphinx and we’d rise early and shoot aboard a feluka (boat) on the Nile. When the silvery tones of the santoor blended with the poignant sound of the oud, it just made us forget all else,” he recalls.

After work hours, with wife Barkha he soaked in the whole café-culture scene, enjoyed the local food and even met pop star Hisham Abbas.

Not many know that Rahul does caricatures as a hobby. “Can’t wait to put my recent Egyptian experience to paper,” he grins.