I have been playing the sarangi since 1970. My first guru was the great blues singer and guitarist Reverand Gary Davis. I have lived in India for around eleven years learning from distinguished sarangi players including Gopal Mishra, Hanuman Prasad Mishra, Abdul Latif Khan, Mohammed Ali Khan and Ghulam Sabir Qadri. I also studied North Indian vocal music with the renowned khyal singer and musicologist Dilip Chandra Vedi and dhrupad singing with Fayazuddin Dagar. I have performed all over the UK, Europe, and America both as a soloist and as an accompanist to vocalists and Kathak dancers, appeared many times on television and contributed sarangi for numerous film soundtracks as well as creating fusion music. In 2001 I finished a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, analysing sarangi style and its relationship with vocal music. Since then, while going on performing and teaching sarangi and vocal music, I have been leading an AHRC-funded project transcribing and analysing around 500 bandishes, the songs of khyal, the pre-eminent genre of Hindustani classical vocal music, soon to be published by Ashgate. Recently while doing research in Bombay I have been learning Agra-style khyal singing with Aslam Khan and Batuk Dewanji. I am a trained and experienced body-oriented psychotherapist and crazy about in-line skating and Cajun and Zydeco dance.
And when I find time, I make and repair Indian instruments.
In the words of Hanuman Prasad Mishra: 'svara ko pyaar karna hai' - one must lovingly caress the notes.
