Alexander In India - Surbahar & Kithara

In spite of having had a lot of fun making this video, I wasn’t too happy with it and originally posted it to YouTube as “unlisted” but a few people asked me to make it public - so here it is.

The surbahar belongs to the Veena Family of the classical instruments of India, and is comparable to the western cello in size and register. The one you see in the video was made for me about 50 years ago by the great Indian luthier, Kanai Lal of Calcutta.

The Greek “kithara” was built by master luthier, Anastasios Koumartzis, of LUTHIEROS MUSIC INSTRUMENTS, which is located in the Macedonian region of Northern Greece. This is the same area in which Alexander The Great was born. The kithara was the instrument of choice for professional musicians during the Golden Age of Greece which reached its height around 500 B.C.E.

In his military exploits, Alexander travelled east as far as the Indus river, which he reached in 326 B.C.E. By that time, he was far from home, his men were getting tired, and they were met by fierce opposition from the armies of the rulers whose territories they invaded. As a result, Alexander never penetrated into the Indian subcontinent, and died in Babylon in 323 B.C.E., on his way back home.
This composition is in the Indian scale (“thaat”) known as “bhairav” (flat 6th and flat 2nd). The surbahar was built to be tuned to an F#, so the kithara is tuned F# G B C C# D F F#.

Видео Alexander In India - Surbahar & Kithara канала Peter Pringle