Taranath, Rajeev, 1932-

Though Rajeev Taranath is one of the outstanding sarod players in India, as a young boy he was trained in tabla playing and Hindustani vocal music.  He afterwards to degrees in English at the University of Mysore and became a lecturer in English.  However, after attending a concert given by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar he abandoned a promising academic career and went to study sarod with Ali Akbar Khan, formerly court musician to the Maharajah of Jodhpur.  

The sarod is a lute descended from the ud of the Arab world and from the equivalent bowed instrument the rabab.  Like the rabab but unlike the vina and sitar it has a sound table of hide and a fretless fingerboard.   Rajeev Taranath's sarod has 25 strings, including four melody strings and 15 sympathetic strings.  The remainder are used rather like drone strings and are struck rhythmically to punctuate the melody during the metred sections of the performanceand, in places, to create a rich background texture.

• Rajeev Taranath