Ram Narayan

Ram Narayan is an Indian musician who popularised the sarangi as a solo concert instrument in Hindustani classical music. He was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2005. Narayan’s fingernails are played by pressing the strings against three playing strings, which strains the nails against three strings.

About Ram Narayan in brief

Ram Narayan is an Indian musician who popularised the sarangi as a solo concert instrument in Hindustani classical music. He was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2005. Ram Narayan was born near Udaipur in northwestern India and learned to play the instrument at an early age. He became a concert solo artist in 1956 and has since performed at the major music festivals of India. He recorded solo albums and made his first international tour in 1964 to America and Europe with his older brother Chatur Lal, a tabla player who had toured with Ravi Shankar in the 1950s. Narayan’s fingernails are played by pressing the strings against three playing strings, which strains the nails against three strings, instead of using the fingering technique used by traditional sarangis. He is also known as the ‘Pandit’ or the ‘Sarangi Pandit’ because he was the first Indian to be awarded the title in the 1980s and 1990s. He has a son, Chatur Narayan, who is also a musician, and a daughter, Sharmila Narayan. He lives in Mumbai with his wife and two children, and has a daughter and a son-in-law, both of whom are also musicians. He also has a step-son and a stepson, who are both musicians and live in New York City. His great-great-grandfather, Bagaji Biyavat, was a singer from Amber, and he and Narayan’s great-grandmother, Sagad Danji BiyAVat, sang at the court of the Maharana of UdaIPur.

Narayan’s grandfather and father were farmers and singers, Nathuji played the bowed instrument dilruba, and his mother was a music lover. He studied and imitated the practice of dhrupad singers Allabande and Zakiruddin Dagar. As a teenager, he worked as a music teacher and travelling musician. He moved to Delhi following the partition of India in 1947, but wishing to go beyond accompaniment and frustrated with his supporting role, moved to Mumbai in 1949 to work in Indian cinema. He later met travelling singer Madhav Prasad, originally of Lucknow, and taught him the ganda bandhan, a traditional ceremony of acceptance between a teacher and his pupil, in which Narayan swore obedience in exchange for being maintained byPrasad. He never performed the ritual again and never performed in Lucknow until his death in 2011. He now teaches Indian and foreign students and performed, frequently outside India, into the 2000s.Narayan’s father taught him, but was worried about the difficulty of playing the Sarangi and its association with courtesan music, which gave the instrument a low social status. His father later encouraged him to leave school and devote himself to playing the sarangsi. He played the instrument for the first time at the age of about six. He auditioned for the local All India Radio station in 1943 and travelled to Lahore in 1943.

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