By Khalida Sarwari
There’s at least one thing 11-year-old Kailash Ranganathan has in common with the Beatles’ lead guitarist, George Harrison: both were influenced by Grammy Award-winning Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar.
The sitar virtuoso helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in pop music throughout the 1960s, including on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” He also made a lasting impression on Kailash, who saw him in one of his last concerts in 2011 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Shankar died the following year at 92.
Kailash was 5 then, but his interest in Indian classical music had only just started burgeoning. Soon after the Shankar concert, he asked his parents for a sitar, a stringed instrument used in Indian classical music.
“I always had an interest in classical music,” he said. “Before I started playing the sitar, I was learning the violin. I went to my first [sitar] class and I really liked it.”
His parents found a sitar instructor in San Jose by the name of Habib Khan and signed him up for lessons. Hours and hours of practice yielded Kailash, who resides in Saratoga with his family, a second sitar and three concerts over the years, with a fourth slated for next month. Kailash said he typically practices two days a week, sometimes more with a concert on the way, for about two hours each time. Learning the sitar came easy to him, he said.
“I like the sound of the sitar; it has a very unique sound,” he said.
He remembers having an interest in both eastern and western classical music for as long as he can remember and said he’s never been much of a fan of the rock and rap genres or modern Indian music. He still plays the violin and is a member of the orchestra at The Harker School, where he’ll be entering the seventh grade this fall.
On Aug. 27, Kailash will be giving a two-hour solo concert at the Woodside High School Performing Arts Center, performing five “ragas,” which in Indian classical music is a melodic framework for improvisation and composition. The ragas will each be about 15 minutes long, with the main one lasting about 45 minutes.
For Kailash, the concert is a “gandabandhan,” an initiation ceremony in which the teacher–in this case, Khan–formally accepts his disciple by tying a sacred thread on his wrist.
“In olden times it would be the first step on a journey,” Kailash explained. “It’s kind of the first step the student takes so that the teacher accepts him truly and thinks he’s ready to put on a big concert.”
When he’s not plucking away on the sitar, Kailash can be found making model airplanes, reading science magazines or darting around the tennis courts at West Valley College.
The concert is free and takes place at 3:30 p.m. at 199 Churchill Ave. in Woodside. Registration is required to kailashsitar.com.
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Saratoga: The influence of Shankar inspires young Kailash to take up the sitar
