1965 – K. Sridhar

Posted February 25, 2017

Sarod player K. Sridhar started learning from Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar at age five so in spite of being of south indian origin he is thoroughly trained in the Dhrupad tradition. He has toured all over the globe and has lived for long stretches of time in France, Great Britain and U.S. He has a lot of recordings and has visited Sweden on several occaisons. He has done three own albums on Country & Eastern and is a guest soloist together with Don Cherry on the “Live in Frankfurt” album by the Bitter Funeral Beer Band. He is also the tanpura player on our albums with Z.M. Dagar: Raag Malkauns, Raag Gangeyabushan and Mishra Bhairavi on sitar. Sridhar stays currently in Stroud in England.
Here he plays Raag Madhuvanti with Maruti Kurdekar on tabla in a concert at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm in September 2001

and here in a Hindustani-Karnatic Jugalbandi with his brother violin K. Shivakumar and Shyam Venkataraman added.

As a student of Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, staying in the same house while growing up Sridhar is of course deeply steeped in Dhrupad and played the tanpura for the great Dagars on a number of occasion. On our releases he is present on tanpura on Ragini Miyan Ki TodiRaag Mishra Bhairavi on sitar, Raag Gangeyabushan, Dhrupad and Raag Komal Ri Asavari

Here is a very informative and deep article on the origins of Dhrupad and review of our 2018 albums by Raul da Gama in World Music Report, Dagar Dynasty: The mysticism of Dagar “Vani” Dhrupad and here is a new (November 13, 2019) good article on K. Sridhar.

For a long time we played quite a lot together after Sridhar moved to Europe. On the latest recording we did together (a live concert in Stockholm 1991) even the tabla playing is quite decent


all records with 1965 – K. Sridhar