Sarod Samrat Ali Akbar Khan: : Raga Zila Kafi : Lover’s Melody: Swapan Choudhary: June 1981

“This music is for everyone. Like fresh air, or clean water. In old times, when the old maestros sang or played instruments in the temple, all the animals, birds, tigers, lions, everything, anyone came to hear the music.“ - Ali Akbar Khan Dr. Allaudin Khan is considered as one of the greatest of North Indian Classical Music and his son Maestro Ali Akbar Kahn now occupies the undisputed title of the Samrat -Emperor of Sarod. In 1967 Ali Saheb founded the now famous Ali Akbar Coolege of Music in San Rafael California. This magnificent performance of Raga Zila Kafi happened on June 21 1981 is called the Lovers Melody and is with the accompaniment of the legendary maestro of the Tabla -Shri Swapan Chaudhuri. The sarod (or sarode) (सरोद, সরোদ) is a stringed instrument, used mainly in Hindustani music on the Indian subcontinent. Along with the sitar, it is among the most popular and prominent instruments. The sarod is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. It is a fretless instrument able to produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which are important in Indian music. The word sarod roughly translates to “beautiful sound“ or “melody“ in Persian, one of the many languages spoken in Afghanistan. Although the sarod has been referred to as a “bass rubab“ its tonal bandwidth is actually considerably greater than that of the rubab, especially in the middle and high registers.