Story of the Zitar

With more and more globalization, many cultures are intermingling. Fusion music is an excellent medium to bring different cultures together. It blends the pleasing elements of different genres of music from different parts of the world to create a new, much more fuller and more engrossing form of music.

Niladri Kumar, a well-known personality in Indian classical and fusion music, has been touring the last few years with his own creation - the Zitar - an electric sitar. A modified  sitar with lesser number of strings and pickups just like an electric guitar, plugged into a guitar effects processor is indeed a marvellous innovation. Now, Niladri does popular fusion concerts besides the regular classical sitar recitals. Niladri's Sitar-funk concerts, where he comes with musicians representing both Indian and western music, are truly enjoyable

The project traces the story of how Zitar came into existence and how has it contributed to Niladri's music as well as to Indian music as a whole. The scope of the project would roughly cover the following after telephonic interviews with Niladri Kumar himself:

• Niladri's early influences and sitar training
• The need for a new instrument
• The idea and concept
• The trigger leading to actually implementing the innovation
• Efforts and timeline of the innovation
• Its impact, utility and application today
• The bigger picture and future of such instrments

Chinmay Bhagwat
Maruti Konduri