CHAPTER 5: Dulcimers in other countries since 1800 > The santur area

Kashmir

 

fig. 232: click

From Kashmir there are two recorded examples, one of fairly unsophisticated folk music, accompanied by the drum, dukra, the other of classical music, very similar to the more well-known Indian santur-playing.

There is much use of tremolo, which at the beginning grows very idiomatically out of repeated notes in pairs, i.e. presumably outlining the maqam, striking each note once with each hammer - a simple enough idea, but one which nevertheless recalls the playing of John Youngman of Norfolk.

Buchner (62) links the names katyayana vina (the vina invented by the philosopher Katyayana) with shatatantri vina ('100 strings' in Sanskrit, the dead classical language of India), as being the same instrument, and so do other writers; but while they identify these names with the qanun, he links them with the santur, "played with light wooden beaters", "the main instrument for classical music".

See also Aima's work (1969).