Newsmaker: Letting his music speak for himself

Sandeep Das is creating a following for traditional Indian music in the West

It was a complaint from his school teacher while he was growing up in Patna that heralded Sandeep Das’s journey into the world of music. He had been disturbing the class by tapping the desk and his feet. “Please take him to a doctor,” was the irate school teacher’s suggestion to the young boy’s father, K N Das. However, his father, who was a music aficionado and enjoyed holding bai thaks at home, instead gifted him a tabla set. And that’s how Das’s musical story began.

When Das turned nine, his father approached Pandit Kishan Maharaj of the Benaras gharana to train the budding tabla player. For four years, Das would board a train to Benaras on Friday evening, train with his teacher in the traditional guru shishya parampara, and then take the train back home to Patna to attend school on Monday. This continued till his father took a transfer to Varanasi so that his musical education could continue unhindered. It is these years of training and the far-reaching vision of his father that Das remembered the most when he received the Grammy on February 12 for Sing Me Home — a collaborative album with the Silk Road Ensemble — in the Best World Music Album category. Sitar player Anoushka Shankar was also nominated in the same category, but failed to add a Grammy to her list of laurels. 

“I am very proud of the Grammy because I’m representing India on a global platform. This was my third Grammy nomination, and we did it this time. So, yes it feels good. I was also very happy because I was the only one on stage wearing our traditional Indian kurta-pajama ensemble. Everyone else wore suits,” he said in a media interview immediately after his win. Vocalist Shubha Mudgal, who has known Das for many years now and was one of the first artistes to tweet about his Grammy win, feels that a musician’s journey is an uncertain one, and can be quite lonely and challenging. “The warmth and support of family, and the opportunity to learn from a wise and generous guru can go a long way in making an artiste’s life less of a bed of thorns,” she says. “And of course, Das’s talent, hard work, grit and determination and above all his commitment to music have brought him the success he so richly deserves. 

What stands out about Das’s music is his distinct individual style, something which stems from his guru’s teachings. Pandit Kishan Maharaj would always discourage his students from copying him and emphasise that a musician’s own personality should shine through. He has kept this in mind always, right from the time he debuted on stage with Pandit Ravi Shankar. In the 1990s, he could be seen collaborating with leading musicians of the time such as Mudgal, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Ustad Shujaat Khan. “Sandeep is firmly tethered to traditional classical music from India, but he is also a musician who keeps his ear closely tuned to listening, learning and gathering knowledge from all sources. This deep respect for tradition and willingness to engage with the unfamiliar is, in my opinion, one of his strengths,” says Mudgal. 

This inclination to bring together different musical cultures is evident in his work for the Silk Road Ensemble. He met the founder, Yo-Yo Ma, nearly 18 years ago and together they have collaborated on several albums, two of which have been nominated for the Grammys earlier as well. Das left India four years ago to settle down in Boston, the USA, where he also spearheads the HUM ensemble (Harmony and Universality through Music) of world-class artistes, whose goal is to promote global understanding through musical performance and education. Through HUM, he also provides a scholarship to visually impaired children to help them learn music.

However, he rues the fact that while India’s classical heritage is being applauded in the West, it is dying out in the country of its origin. In a media interview, he said: “It’s a sad fact that when anybody (an Indian) gets a global prize, India wakes up then. It is also very unfortunate that the media is obsessed with cricket, Bollywood and models. Nothing is bad about it, but our obsession with very few things is definitely very sad… . Where is the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award or any award? I have never got any award in my country. And this was my third Grammy nomination.”