Players
A short tradition to trace, because it nearly ended. These are the people who carried it, changed it, and are currently keeping it alive.
Jhalak Man Gandarbha
The most significant Nepali folk singer of the twentieth century, and the person most responsible for the sarangi being heard as something other than a beggar's instrument. He sang and played his own compositions, of which "Aamaale Sodhlin" — "Mother will ask" — is the one everyone knows and one of the most affecting songs in the language.
Start here. If you listen to one thing before touching the instrument, listen to him, and notice how the sarangi answers the voice rather than accompanying it.
The Nepali family
Four generations, and the clearest single thread through the instrument's modern history.
- Magar Gaine Nepali — songwriter of tunes that are now simply part of Nepal, including Kanchi Matyang Tyang and Sani Sani. He taught the craft, the playing and the philosophy of it to his son and grandsons.
- Ram Sharan Nepali — his son, and among the first Gandharba to tour and perform outside Nepal. He also modernised the instrument itself: metal strings in place of gut, and a violin bow in place of the traditional bamboo one. Both changes are now common. See Strings and bow.
- Shyam Nepali — Ram Sharan's son, based in the United States, a touring musician and teacher on more than fifty recordings. He founded the Himalayan Heritage Cultural Academy in Boston to teach sarangi and Nepali music to the diaspora, and has taught much of the generation now playing.
- Purna Nepali — Ram Sharan's son, who builds instruments by hand in Kathmandu. A cultural activist of the same name from Batulechaur spent sixteen years documenting the tradition in a book, Gandharva: Music and Culture.
- Prince Nepali — Shyam's son. The fourth generation.
Kiran Nepali and Project Sarangi
A third-generation sarangi player who has probably done more than anyone to change what the instrument means to young Nepalis. He came to it sideways — guitar first, then taught himself sarangi and inside four months was good enough to join the folk band Kutumba.
In 2012 he founded Project Sarangi in Kathmandu, and it is the most substantial answer anyone has given to the tradition's decline. It:
- Teaches a four-level curriculum, Basic to Post-Advanced.
- Builds instruments — production in Bhaktapur and Kirtipur, assembly at Jhamsikhel — and has deliberately standardised size, materials and acoustics, so that for the first time a sarangi is a consistent object you can buy and learn on.
- Ran a free three-month course for women, because Nepali music has very few women instrumentalists and the sarangi almost none. Ten took it; they went on to perform.
- Put a hundred sarangis and a hundred-hour curriculum into Kathmandu government schools through the city's "Book-Free Friday" programme.
- Employs Gandharba craftsmen and hires its own former students as teachers.
Kutumba
An instrumental Nepali folk ensemble, and the reason a generation of Nepali teenagers thinks the sarangi is cool. Kutumba plays traditional material on traditional instruments to audiences who would otherwise be listening to rock — and put the sarangi, the madal and even the arbajo back into the mainstream. Kiran Nepali plays sarangi with them, and also with Navneet Aditya Waiba, Bipul Chettri and Playing for Change.
Also worth knowing
- Khim Bahadur Gandharva — of Batulechaur, in his nineties, a karkha singer who once played for Mao Zedong and can no longer use his left hand. See Karkha.
- Barta Gandharba — a young woman sarangi player, taught in part by Shyam Nepali, who reached a national audience through The Voice of Nepal in 2019. Given how few women have ever played this instrument publicly, that matters.
- Balaram Gandharba — a Kathmandu player whose recordings are freely available and are among the easiest honest examples to find online.
- Bharat Nepali — teacher of the school that stops the strings with the fingernails rather than the fingertips.