Inspired by The Voice of the Sarangi and the music of sarangi player Abdul Latif Khan, the influential poet Ashok Vajpeyi organized a Sarangi Mela at the Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, from 15 to 17 September 1989.
Hanuman Prasad Misra inaugurated the festival and Ram Narayan and Komal Kothari were chief guests. I received an invitation from Vajpeyi (and a travel grant from the Dutch ministry of Welzijn, Volksgezondheid en Cultuur) to deliver a keynote address at this historic event which was widely reviewed by the Indian press.
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About 80 sarangi players were invited to participate in the mela, but twice as many showed up. Western sarangi aficionados like Daniel Neuman, Neil Sorrell and Nicolas Magriel were also present.
After the festival a ‘Plan for Sarangi’ and the ‘Bhopal Declaration on Sarangi’ were issued.
1994 Seminar on Sarangi
On 9 January 1994, Arvind Parikh of the ITC-Sangeet Research Academy organized a follow-up Seminar on Sarangi in Bombay. Ram Narayan was the chief guest, and sarangi maestros Sabri Khan, Munir Khan, Sultan Khan, Abdul Latif Khan and Dhruba Ghosh were also present.
Professor Prem Lata Sharma gave an inaugural speech, and both Ashok Vajpeyi and I delivered keynotes. Komal Kothari and Rajesh Bahadur also spoke at the seminar, and so did Daniel Neuman and Regula Burckhardt Qureshi.
