Rishab Sharma

As a musician Rishab Sharma has this surreal quality to draw the listener’s attention inward and detach from the external world. After an extensive tour across the States and Cana, the 26-year-old musician is back with a performance that induces education and experience of the auditory sensory processing system with the help of classical music and reintroduce the sound of the sitar as a transformational tool. The multi-city tour is his biggest till date. We got in touch to know more!

The new tour
This is our biggest tour till date. We are doing shows which range from 800 to 1800 capacity, barring Goa which was an intimate show with about 150 people and that too early in the morning. The gatherings have tripled from the last tour, on an average. We have some amazing musicians lined up for this tour like in Bombay we had Naveen Kumar on the flute, we flew in Kutla Khan who is a maestro of the Kartal and he performs with some big collectives which is the Manganiar Seduction and he got Raghuraman R who is Lucky Ali's bassist and guitarist, we got Keith Peters who has worked with AR Rahman for over 25 years. I have some new music that I am showcasing and along with that, we have some more breathing exercises, we have more audience interactions, some new fun questions that we encourage people to ask between each other so they can have that sense of community. It's not just an event, it's a celebration of music, mental health, good mental health practices and using sound to heal oneself is our top priority and making more noise about mental health and opening up more conversation to de-stigmatize mental health and just normalizing things is our end goal with this tour.

Inspirations
I rarely take inspiration from just the music that I do, it's often a very different culture that I take inspiration from or I just take inspiration from other forms of art like how can I implement something that is done on a canvas into my music, sort of draw parallels, or draw parallels from different genres also like hiphop, how can I make my music more hip using whatever is going on in the world right now. Inspiration can strike from anywhere; you just have to have an eye for that.

Reviving classical music
Classical music is doing great, ofcourse after the demise of legends like PT Ravi Shankar, we often feel orphaned but there's always someone holding the fort like Zakir Ji winning 3 Grammys was a very big thing for India. Definitely representation helps but at the same time, I'm not someone who runs after awards, I'm sure they're nice but if you put all your love into your music than that's awarded, that's great but then I never make music to get awards or anything like that. I feel like that has been happening lately and I never want that to be the case with me. I want to represent and be an ambassador for traditional Indian music in the purest way possible and when I say pure, I mean to keep the tradition alive and how it is and not altering it. That's why first half of my shows are purely classical, how it should be presented and how my guru taught me to present it. In the second half, I like to show the different applications of Sitar and because I know I have such a strong backing in Indian classical music, I can do this other stuff but it's not vice versa. If I was just playing lighter music, I wouldn't be able to play deep classical music and lead meditation on my sitar as that takes a lot of training and learning.

Making it Modern
I listen to a lot of genres, specially hip-hop, Rap, I listen to what's going on in the world, as a producer also, I like producing different genres and now I've started to merge it, for the past 5-6 years I've been trying to fit in Sitar in a way where I always me think I can have my guruji appreciate it and also a 13 year old appreciating this form of music that I made. Often, I find it hard to put it in a genre because it's something that has never existed before, like the type of beats, melodies that I play, so it's very different. Usually, people just run a beat and then play heavy classical music on top of it and then its just a very polarized view and it's very evident that's it's not merging and it's not real fusion and the beat is not merging with the Sitar or whatever instrument. I really try to hold hands and make friends with the beat and find the right rhythm, melody, patterns to accompany it.

Making meditative music
It  is all impromptu like I don't plan on playing a specific note so it's always with the flow, whatever it defines honestly and also like leading a meditation is a very responsible task because everyone's eyes are closed and they are all connecting to their deep selves and you have to play the right notes, you can't play one note like super loud, it has to all be in tune, in the same feeling, emotion because anything that you do which is striking will snap people out of their meditation. It's a huge responsibility as it has to flow very nicely. I'm often in a lot of pressure when I'm initially playing the first 5 notes that how can I take people on a journey because it is like taking off the journey because once we're up then we're up. That's usually the challenging bit but thanks to my gurus and all my teachers that I've been taught how to have a good hold of the melody and the raga. You should always be under the raga and not like riding on top of it like can I play you rather than hey I'm going to play you. You can't be dominant on the raga; you have to be very humble and then the raga would invite you. That's usually my thought process and my creative process while leading a meditation.

New music in the works
My EP is in the works and we are planning to release it very soon before the tour ends and it's going to be calling Sitar for Mental Health Tape which has approximately 5-6 ragas produced in a very interesting and a modern way. Some have a very celebratory feeling; some have a very sitar at burning man feeling and some have a very chill lo-fi feeling so it's like a bouquet of ragas that people can enjoy and listen to.