The sarangi’s sassy side

Can Sarangi maestro Kamal Sabri do for sarangi, what Ustad Zakir Hussain did for the tabla or Pandit Shivkumar Sharma did for the santoor? Only time will tell. But Sabri believes he can. And his new album Sarangi Funk (which took the artist two years to put together) does show great promise in starting off a new chapter in the history of the instrument.  

Sabri experiments with various sounds from different parts of the world in one single album, making it one of a kind. Spanish, folk, jazz, blues, Arabic and electro — the sarangi goes into unexpected zones. “Sarangi is about dhrupad, khayal, thumri, dadra, film songs and bhajans. But it’s never been about dance music or energetic music. That is where other sarangi players haven’t ventured. I wanted to explore that with this album,” he says. 

It wasn’t the easiest decision for Sabri though because he has a lineage to live up to and follow in the footsteps of father and sarangi exponent Ustad Sabri Khan. “It was not easy for me to experiment because I have a tradition to live up to. I have to be deep rooted in the ancient music. You cannot dilute music. But at the same time you have to move with the times. So I didn’t degrade the music. I went into zones like the blues.”

Technology blends with traditional sarangi for the first time with Sarangi Funk and gets into electro mode in the track called Sarangi Technology, then it goes Arabic with Savra, folksy with Namaste India, jazz and blues with Jazzirangi and Spanish tap dancing zone with Sarangi Spania. Covering so many unique facets of sarangi in one
single album is quite an achievement.