Sanjay Rikhi Ram
Partition took everything from this workshop once, and it was rebuilt from nothing.
Pt. Rikhi Ram Sharma was born in 1900 in the village of Samoor in Una district, Himachal Pradesh, and learned his craft under Abdul Karim Poonchwale and Ramzan Khan. He built his working life in Lahore, and his instruments were played by Ustad Fayyaz Khan, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Pt. Onkar Nath Thakur, musicians for whom an instrument was not equipment but an extension of the performer.
Partition ended that. He arrived in Delhi with the work of decades behind him and started again, and Delhi is where the name was made a second time. He died in 1961, leaving the workshop to his son, Pt. Bishan Dass Sharma, who held to traditional construction through the years when Western influence was reshaping Indian music, and who refined the tonal depth and structural strength the instruments are known for.
The workshop is led today by his son, Shri Sanjay Sharma. What Rikhi Ram sitars are known for under him is meend: six to six and a half notes bent from a single fret, with the microtonal stability that demands. That is not a specification you can see. It is the result of how the dandi and tabli are built and how the jawari is dressed, and it is the reason players who bend deeply choose these instruments.
Manjul Sharma joined the workshop in 1993 and now leads it as CEO. Together they founded Sanjay Rikhi Ram Vadya Parampara, an institution for research into and preservation of Indian instrument making. The next generation, Rishab Rikhiram Sharma, carries the work onto international stages.
We carry one Rikhi Ram sitar, a kharaj pancham with a single toomba, and it is the most expensive sitar in our catalogue. If you want a different specification from this workshop, message us on WhatsApp and we will tell you honestly what can be sourced and how long it will take.
Kharaj pancham means additional lower sympathetic strings, giving a deeper, fuller resonance underneath the melody. Paired with the meend these instruments are built for, it is a combination that suits players working in the slower, more expansive end of the repertoire.
See Sitar and Sitar Brands.
