CH – Raga CDs of the Months (12/2011): “The Sarangi Project! … The Voice of a 100 Colours”

In the expenditure for December of the regular show Raga CDs of the Month IMC OnAir’s main topic being broadcasted in Switzerland @ Radio RaSA is “The Sarangi Project! … The Voice of a 100 Colours“.

The title of the radio show “The Sarangi Project!” leans against it’s name patron of rescue initiatives for the Sarangi of the 90th (last century) in England and the U.S.A.. In far parts of India also in the neighbour regions of Nepal and Pakistan… and from music lovers all over the world, emigrants of Indian nationality the Sarangi appears in consciousness particularly threatened by extinct. – The December show follows the question whether this picture is still to be confirmed in the 21st century?

Lucknow Sarangi (source: India-Instruments.de)

The Sarangi is an Indian bowed string instrument, the Indian fidel. Around it’s origin different myths and theories climb. The Sarangi could led back on a pupil of the large Pythagoras, the Egyptian Boo Ali Ibn Sina.

The Sarangi or Saurangi is well-known in India characteristically as “the voice of hundred colours”. The Idiom is derived from two words of the official national language Hindi: “sau” means “100” and “rang” is translated to “colour”.

date of broadcasting:
12th December 2011– 10:00 p.m. METZ (04:00 pm EST) @ Radio RaSA (CH)
(premiere: 4th September 2007 @ Radio Tide 96.0 FM)
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If one gets the Sarangi sound for the first time to the ears she or he may be surprised a little of it’s twangy, pulled, metallically sounding tone with a pronounced echo.

The Sarangi is far superior for the accentuation of Raga scales to all in the Western World known Indian instruments like the Sarod, Santoor or Sitar. The Sarangi is the most difficult instrument of India to be played.

Sir Yehudi Menuhin, the large violonist of the Western Classical period, was occupied on its numerous India journeys intensively with this music culture. He judged of the Sarangi as follows – and in special over the play of Ram Narayan, the great master of this instrument, who is in India equated with the Sarangi:

“The Sarangi embodies most authentically
the origin Indian string instrument played with a bow.
It expresses the Indian soul, it’s feelings and
Indian thinking soonest.“