Resources

Where the material in this room came from, and where to go next. The Nepali sarangi is thinly documented, so some of this is the whole literature rather than a selection from it.

Lessons and instruments

• Project Sarangi, Kathmandu — courses at four levels, handmade instruments, enquiries through the site. Founded by Kiran Nepali. The obvious first stop. More
• Himalayan Heritage Cultural Academy, Boston — founded by Shyam Nepali to teach sarangi and Nepali music, particularly to the diaspora.
• Gandharba makers in Batulechaur (Pokhara) and in Kathmandu, including Purna Nepali's workshop. Buying from a Gandharba maker who plays is the best way to get a playable instrument and the best use of your money.

Reading

• Purna Nepali, Gandharva: Music and Culture — sixteen years of documentation of the tradition from inside it, by a cultural activist from Batulechaur. The most substantial single work on the subject.
• Anna Stirr on jhyaure — the music, the poetic metre and the politics of it. The essential academic work on the genre that carries most of this repertoire. What we used it for
• Subi Shah, Madal — the late Nepali musicologist on the folk taals and the dance genres, and the source for how jhyaure's counting may have arrived.
• Alison Arnold (ed.), The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: South Asia — the reference entries on Nepali music, the arbajo and Gandharba ritual playing.
• A. W. Macdonald, Essays on the Ethnology of Nepal and South Asia — the older ethnography, and the source for the Gandharba's own account of their status declining under the Ranas.
• Wikipedia: Sarangi (Nepali) and Gandarbha — accurate on construction, woods, tuning and the community, and the source of the audio samples. Note that its tuning section contradicts itself; see Other tunings.
• Socio-economic studies of the Batulechaur community, published in Nepali journals, for the census figures and the current condition of the settlement.

Hearing it

See Listen for who to listen to and what to listen for. Briefly: Jhalak Man Gandarbha first, then Kutumba, then Shyam Nepali.

The BBC Media Action Nepal programmes Katha Mitho Sarangiko and Sarangiko Bhalakusari are named after the instrument and are worth knowing about as evidence of what it meant. Why

Elsewhere on this site

• Eastern theory — swara, saptak, thaat, tala, alankar and the drone, shared across every Eastern room. The sarangi pages apply it rather than restating it.
• Madal — the drum that goes with this instrument, with jhyaure, khyali, kaharba and the rest as playable grids. How they fit together
• Singing — the sarangi exists to double a voice, and nearly every player sings. If you are serious, work on both.
• Basuri — the other melodic instrument of Nepali folk music, and a useful contrast: same swaras, no slides between them.
• Frequency, Ear training — for tuning by ear and for training the ear you tune with.

What this room does not have

Worth being explicit, since the gaps are real rather than accidental:

• No recordings of a real sarangi. Every sound here is synthesised. It is accurate about pitch and shape and it is not the tone of a goatskin head under gut strings. Use it as a reference, not as a model.
• No fingering chart. Not an omission — the instrument is not standardised enough for one to be true. Why
• Few full transcriptions. The tradition has no notation, folk tunes have no authoritative version, and inventing one and presenting it as the tune would be worse than leaving it out. Why
• No karkha. The repertoire that matters most is the one least documented, and it is disappearing with the men who hold it. Why that matters