CP’s music corner

The shop was set up in 1948 by Rikhi Ram and his son Pt Bishen Das Sharma after they moved from Lahore to Delhi after Partition. Rikhi Ram was a vocalist and an instrument maker who worked in the Lahore museum and also ran a music shop in the Old Anarkali Bazaar,Lahore. Over the years,the shop in Delhi became famous for its custom-made instruments.

“I hail from a family of musicians and music is definitely in my blood,” says Rikhi Ram’s grandson Ajay Rikhi Ram,who now runs the shop and is a musician. Ajay’s father Bishen Das Sharma won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Puraskar in ’97 and Ajay,who graduated in commerce,went on to get a music degree in sitar.

Ajay also created the electric sitar,an instrument that is an amalgamation of the guitar and the sitar. The idea behind the instrument came when he was performing with western musicians on stage and discovered he couldn’t keep up with their tempo. He’s now working on more such innovations.

“As technology changes,we as musicians need to keep up,” he says.

Making instruments is hard work. It takes a month to make four to five sitars and the wood has to be at least ten years old. After a sitar is made,it’s left out for a while and then studied thoroughly in case something has to rectified. Ajay says the shop provides employment to people who carve instruments out of wood,a dying profession in this age of electronic music.

Not that Ajay is unfamiliar with other genres of music. He is also the co-founder of Hypnotic Gurus,a fusion band that creates electronic sound,blending the essence of classical music with elements of Western music. “It is very important to get the attention of young people who are moving away from our music and our objective is to make them realise the importance of Indian classical music,” he says. “It is only Westerners who seem to be very interested in our music,” he says.

One such interested group from the West were The Beatles,who on an India trip in 1966,popped into the shop and bought a tabla,a harmonium and a sitar.

“The Beatles got to know about the shop from actor Peter Sellers,” says Ajay. “That’s the magic of this shop.”

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