Second edition of Saz-e-Bahar

Saz-e-Bahar, the Festival of Indian Instrumental Music,showcased the repertoire of Indian musical instruments from different categories –– wind-blown (sundari),string-plucked (sarod),string-struck (santoor) and drums-percussion (tabla and pakhavaj) in a two-day festival on April 14 and 15. The festival featured renowned performers like Bhimanna Jadhav and group,Partho Sarothy,Ashoke Mukherjee,Ulhas Bapat,Makarand Tulankar and Suresh Talwalkar. The festival aims to display the vast potential and melody of these instruments.

Sundari is a double-reed wind instrument akin to its popular cousin,Shehnai,in its shape and construction but much shorter in size. The sarod has six to seven main strings and twelve sympathetic strings. The present-day santoor is a wooden trapezoid with thirty bridges arranged in fifteen rows and its counterpart in Western music is the dulcimer or the cymbalon.

Pakhavaj is a double-faced drum referred to as mridanga. It has been inseperably associated with the dhrupad-dhamar tradition.