The mysticism and magic of India comes to life with our Sitar, Tabla & Tanpura players available for your next Boston or New England based event.  Our Sitar players and small groups evoke an exotic atmosphere that incorporates beautiful harmonies that  Indian / Hindustani music is known for.  A great idea as background music for weddings, corporate events as well as yoga retreats and meditation classes.

About the Sitar
The sitar is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Indian classical music. It derives its resonance from sympathetic strings, a long hollow neck and a gourd resonating chamber.
Used widely throughout the Indian subcontinent, the sitar became known in the western world through the work of Ravi Shankar beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s after The Kinks’ top 10 single “See My Friends” featured a low tuned drone guitar which was widely mistaken to be the instrument.[1] The sitar saw further use in popular music after The Beatles featured the sitar in their compositions, namely “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and “Within You Without You”. Their use of the instrument came as a result of George Harrison taking lessons on how to play it from Shankar and Shambhu Das.[2] Shortly after, Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones used a sitar in “Paint It, Black” and a brief fad began for using the instrument in pop songs.  (Source : Wikipedia )

Popular Player of the Instrument
Ravi Shankar (Bengali: born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury on 7 April 1920), often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indianmusician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the most known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.[1]
Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.
In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. Shankar was awarded India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999, and received three Grammy Awards. He continues to perform in the 2000s, often with his daughter Anoushka.
(Source : Wikipedia )