Aanga Vadya

What instrument comes closest to the human voice? In the West, most people would say the cello, the violin or the guitar.

In India, traditionalists maintain it's the sarangi, a stringed instrument with a squat body and a soundboard of goat skin, played with a bow.
Sarangi is believed to mean "a hundred colours," reflecting its stylistic adaptability and huge emotional palette. But there is a good reason why this extraordinary instrument is rarely heard.

"The challenge is to be able to play it in tune," says Sultan Khan, a sarangi master. "This is not easy, because apart from the three main strings made of gut, there are 36 sympathetic strings made of metal. This gives the sarangi a built-in resonance chamber, and the sympathetic strings can be heard clearly. It becomes very obvious if the musician is out of tune."
Khan, originally from Rajasthan and now living in Mumbai, is a ninth-generation sarangi player who began learning the instrument at the age of 3. He comes to Vancouver with tabla legend Zakir Hussain's Masters of Percussion. The program features several virtuosic Indian artists, including dancing-drummers from Manipur.

Khan remained primarily an instrumentalist until a few years ago. Filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali asked him to sing for one of his Bollywood movies. Soon after, Khan hit major commercial success with the resulting album, Piya Basanti.
"Since sarangi is the instrument used to accompany vocal music, many players have also become singers. In the concert, I will also be doing a vocal piece based on either a bhajan [Hindu devotional song] or a folk melody."

In one sense, Khan is returning to the roots of the sarangi -- the mythical ones, anyway. "It traces its origin to Ravana, a great worshipper of Lord Shiva. He is said to have made the instrument with strings from his own veins in order to sing hymns in praise of Lord Shiva."