International Day of Yoga 2023

Atarashi Nobuhiro met and started to study with Shri Ramesh Dey of Hindustani music (northern Indian classical music) on sitar in 2006 which he visited Benares for the first time on his trip to India. He became a disciple of Dey’s guru, Pt Rabindra Narayan Goswami, a leading maestro both in Khayal and Dhrupad music of Varanasi in 2009 through his introduction.

He also has taken classes from Mr Kenji Inoue, who belongs to “Senia Rampur Sahaswan Gharana” the same school of khayal music, since 2017 under permission from his guru.

The sitar is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in 19th-century India. Khusrau Khan, an 18th-century figure of Mughal Empire has been identified by modern scholarship as the originator of Sitar. According to most historians, he developed the sitar from the setar, an Iranian instrument of Abbasid or Safavid origin.

Another view supported by a minority of scholars is that Khusrau Khan developed it from Veena. Used widely throughout the Indian subcontinent, the sitar became popularly known in the wider world through the works of Ravi Shankar, beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s.