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Santur

by David Courtney working tools

Santur

Santur is an instrument in­di­ge­nous to Kashmir, but nowadays played throughout the North.  It is a hammered dulcimer which is struck with light wooden mallets.  The num­ber of strings may be as few as 24 or more than 100.  Typical sizes tend to be around 80.  It has a vibrant tone and has be­come very pop­ular in the last 20 years.

One must not confuse the In­dian santur with the Persian santur.  The In­dian santur is box-like while the Persian version is much wider.

Indian vs. Persian Santur

Two play­ing posi­tions are shown below:

Santur Playing Position

In the first pic­ture the instrument is resting on a small stand.  The se­cond pic­ture shows it be­ing placed in the lap.  Sometimes it is placed di­rec­tly on the floor.  The small wooden mallets are placed lightly bet­ween the index and mid­dle fingers.  This is facilitated by two finger sized cut-outs in the mallets.  The mallets are shown below:

Mallets
holding the mallets

Tuning styles are ext­remely variable.  They are us­ually tuned to the par­ti­cu­lar rag and must therefore be retuned for each piece.  Fur­ther­more dif­fer­ent art­ists have their own styles of tuning.

The origin of the instrument is clear.  The name, struc­ture, and technique point solidly to the Middle East.  Yet, there are those who attempt to trace its origins to an ancient In­dian harp like instrument known as “Vana Veena”.  There is abso­lutely no evidence for this lat­ter view.  If we are to accept this pro­po­si­tion, then how are we to explain its 2000 year disappearance, followed by a miraculous reappearance in a form and usage that, by mere coincidence, is si­mi­lar to the mid­dle eastern santur?  It is clear that attempts to link the santur with this Vedic instrument are a mere ref­lec­tion of a Hindu cul­tural bias and are not sup­portable by ser­ious scholarship.

Are you interested in a secular approach to teaching Indian music.
Indian music is traditional taught in a fashion that is linked to Hindu world views. But there are situations, often in schools, where this approach may not be the best. In such situations The Music of South Asia may be the best resource for you.

Photo Gallery

Santur

santur

Sound hole

santur - sound hole

Hammers

santur - hammers

Bridges

santur - bridges

Tuning pegs

santur - tuning pegs

String Attachments

santur - string attachments

Selected Video


Other Sites of Interest

Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya (Review)

Catalogue of Indian Musical Instruments

Fractal dimension analysis of audio signals for Indian musical instrument recognition

Natural synthesis of North Indian musical instruments

Recognition of Indian Musical Instruments with Multi-Classifier Fusion

The Tagore collection of Indian musical instruments

Improvement of Audio Feature Extraction Techniques in Traditional Indian Musical Instrument

East Indians musical instruments

Yantra kosha; or, A Treasury of the Musical Instruments of Ancient and of Modern India, and of Various Other Countries