57 Facts About Ram Narayan

Ram Narayan, often referred to with the title Pandit, is an Indian musician who popularised the bowed instrument sarangi as a solo concert instrument in Hindustani classical music and became the first internationally successful sarangi player.

Ram Narayan studied under sarangi players and singers and, as a teenager, worked as a music teacher and travelling musician.

Ram Narayan moved to Delhi following the partition of India in 1947, but wishing to go beyond accompaniment and frustrated with his supporting role, Narayan moved to Mumbai in 1949 to work in Indian cinema.

Ram Narayan became a concert solo artist in 1956 and has since performed at the major music festivals of India.

Ram Narayan recorded solo albums and made his first international tour in 1964 to America and Europe with his older brother Chatur Lal, a tabla player who had toured with Shankar in the 1950s.

Ram Narayan taught Indian and foreign students and performed, frequently outside India, into the 2000s.

Ram Narayan was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2005.

Ram Narayan was born on 25 December 1927 in Amber village, near Udaipur in northwestern India.

Ram Narayan's great-great-grandfather, Bagaji Biyavat, was a singer from Amber, and he and Narayan's great-grandfather, Sagad Danji Biyavat, sang at the court of the Maharana of Udaipur.

Ram Narayan's grandfather, Har Lalji Biyavat, and father, Nathuji Biyavat, were farmers and singers, Nathuji played the bowed instrument dilruba, and Ram Narayan's mother was a music lover.

Ram Narayan's father taught him, but was worried about the difficulty of playing the sarangi and its association with courtesan music, which gave the instrument a low social status.

At about ten years of age, Ram Narayan learned the basics of dhrupad, the oldest genre of Hindustani classical music, by studying and imitating the practice of sarangi player Uday Lal of Udaipur, a student of dhrupad singers Allabande and Zakiruddin Dagar.

Ram Narayan served Prasad and was taught in khyal, the predominant genre of Hindustani classical music, but returned to Udaipur after four years to teach music school.

Prasad later visited Ram Narayan and convinced him to resign his position and dedicate his time to improvement as a musician, although the idea of giving up a steady life was not well received by Ram Narayan's family.

Ram Narayan stayed with Prasad and travelled to several Indian states until Prasad fell ill and advised him to learn from singer Abdul Wahid Khan in Lahore.

Ram Narayan travelled to Lahore in 1943 and auditioned for the local All India Radio station as a singer, but the station's music producer, Jivan Lal Mattoo, noticed grooves in Ram Narayan's fingernails: sarangis are played by pressing the fingernails sideways against three playing strings, which strains the nails.

Mattoo advised Ram Narayan and helped him contact khyal singer Abdul Wahid Khan, a rigorous teacher under whom Ram Narayan learned four ragas through singing lessons.

Ram Narayan was allowed sporadic solo performances on AIR and began to consider a solo career.

Ram Narayan played with the classical singers Omkarnath Thakur, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Hirabai Badodekar, and Krishnarao Shankar Pandit, and he accompanied singer Amir Khan in 1948, when Khan sang for the first time at AIR Delhi following the partition.

Ram Narayan became frustrated with his supporting role for vocalists and moved to Mumbai in 1949 to work independently in film music and recording.

Ram Narayan was considered a desired choice of film music director O P Nayyar.

Ram Narayan performed in Afghanistan in 1952 and in China in 1954 and was well received in both countries.

Ram Narayan pondered giving up the sarangi and becoming a singer.

Ram Narayan later regained confidence, performed solo for smaller crowds, and was favourably received in his second attempt to play solo for a Mumbai music festival in 1956.

Ram Narayan has since performed at the major music festivals of India.

Ram Narayan later gave up accompaniment; this decision carried a financial risk because interest in solo sarangi was not yet substantial.

Ram Narayan recorded solo albums and made his first international tour in 1964 to America and Europe with his older brother Chatur Lal, a tabla player who had toured with Shankar in the 1950s.

Ram Narayan continued to perform and record in India and abroad for the next decades and his recordings appeared on Indian, American, and European labels.

Ram Narayan performed less frequently in the 2000s and rarely in the 2010s.

Ram Narayan's style is characteristic of Hindustani classical music, but his choice of solo instrument and his background of learning from teachers outside his community are not common for the genre.

Ram Narayan has stated that he aims to please the audience and create a feeling of harmony, and expects the audience to reciprocate by reacting to his playing.

Ram Narayan's performances are strung together from the meditative and measured alap and jor in dhrupad style, followed by a faster and less reserved gat section in khyal style.

Ram Narayan experimented with a style of jhala developed by Bundu Khan, but considered it more appropriate for plucked instruments and stopped performing it.

Ram Narayan often completes performances with ragas associated with thumri, which are referred to as mishra because they allow for additional notes, or with a dhun.

Ram Narayan uses his left hand for runs and to play an extended melodic range, and his right hand for rhythmic accentuations.

Ram Narayan's fingering technique, his low right hand position, keeping the bow in a close to right angle to the string, and his use of the full bow length are unusual among sarangi players.

Ram Narayan is associated with the Kirana gharana through Abdul Wahid Khan, but his performance style is not strongly connected to it.

Ram Narayan has created original compositions and in performance varies those he was taught.

Ram Narayan uses a sarangi obtained from Uday Lal and built in Meerut in the 1920s or 1930s in his concerts and recordings.

Ram Narayan plays on foreign harp strings to produce a clearer tone.

Ram Narayan experimented with modifications to his instrument and added a fourth string, but removed it because it hindered playing.

Ram Narayan increased the status of the sarangi to that of a modern concert solo instrument, made it known outside of India, and was the first sarangi player with international success, an example later followed by Sultan Khan.

Ram Narayan's simplified fingering technique allows for glide and affected the modern sarangi concert style, as aspects of his playing and tone creation were taken up by sarangi players from Ram Narayan's recordings.

Ram Narayan taught at the American Society for Eastern Arts and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai in the 1970s and 1980s, where he gave the first master class for sarangi.

Ram Narayan taught sarod players, including his son Brij Narayan, as well as vocalists and a violinist.

Indian music in performance: a practical introduction, released in 1980 by Neil Sorrell in cooperation with Ram Narayan, was described as "one of the best presentations on modern North Indian music practice" by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Ram Narayan argued that appreciation of the sarangi and him came only after acknowledgment by the Western audience.

Ram Narayan attributed the lack of sarangi students to a lack of competent teachers and said that the Indian government should assist in preserving the instrument.

Ram Narayan has stated he was skeptical the sarangi would survive and said he would never give up promoting the instrument.

Ram Narayan received the national awards Padma Shri in 1976, Padma Bhushan in 1991, and Padma Vibhushan in 2005.

Ram Narayan shared a close relationship with his older brother, Chatur Lal, who learned the tabla primarily to accompany his brother's sarangi playing.

When Lal died in October 1965, Ram Narayan had difficulty performing and struggled with alcoholism, but overcame the addiction after two years.

Ram Narayan assisted his brother's four children after their father's death.

Ram Narayan's oldest son, sarod player Brij Narayan, was born on 25 April 1952 in Udaipur, and his daughter Aruna Narayan was born in 1959 in Mumbai.

Ram Narayan was the first woman to give a solo sarangi concert and immigrated to Canada in 1984.

In 2009, Ram Narayan performed at BBC's The Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Aruna, and he played at the 2010 Sawai Gandharva Music Festival, Pune, with Harsh.

Ram Narayan is a Hindu and has stated "music is my religion", arguing that there was no better access to divinity than music.