There are moments in a classroom that remind you why you teach. This is one of them.
Ananya, Venkat, and Divya — three students who have each devoted eight to ten years to the sitar — sat down together recently for a class session in Raga Yamani. What followed was a performance of both Drut Gat and Jhala that went beyond technical fluency. It carried understanding.
Drut Gat in Raga Yamani
The Drut Gat is a fast composition — drut meaning speed in Sanskrit — set to a quick rhythmic cycle, typically Teentaal or Ektaal. At this tempo, the gap between a student who has merely practiced and one who has truly internalized the raga becomes impossible to hide. The melodic lines must move through the raga's characteristic phrases with ease, not effort.
Drut Gat in Raga Yamani — subscribe at @sitar_bug on YouTube
Watch how the three navigate Yamani's distinct melodic contours — its characteristic phrases that lean on the notes of Yaman while carrying something uniquely their own. Years of listening and slow practice have brought them here: playing fast, playing clean, and playing with feeling.
Jhala in Raga Yamani
If the Drut Gat tests melodic fluency, the Jhala tests rhythmic fire. The closing movement of a classical sitar performance, the Jhala is built on rapid, cascading strokes across the chikari (drone strings), layered against a driving rhythmic pulse. The effect — when executed well — is electric. When executed with the control and separation these students bring to it, it is something genuinely moving to witness.
Jhala in Raga Yamani — subscribe at @sitar_bug on YouTube
Raga Yamani — A Raga Born from a Master
Raga Yamani is not a raga unearthed through centuries of oral tradition. It was composed — a rare thing in Indian classical music — by Ustad Vilayat Khan, one of the greatest sitar virtuosos who ever lived, and my own all-time idol and deepest source of inspiration.
“To study Yamani is, in a very real sense, to study the mind of Vilayat Khan — how he heard melody, how he moved between ragas, and what he felt was missing and worth creating.”
Rooted in the Kalyan thaat, Yamani draws from the grace and expansiveness of Raga Yaman, the gentle shimmer of Raga Yaman Kalyan, and traces of other ragas from the same family — weaving them into a raga that is distinctly the Ustad's own vision. It carries the open, twilight quality of the Kalyan family — the teevra Madhyam (raised fourth) that gives these ragas their characteristic brightness — but with a melodic personality that feels like a conversation across ragas rather than a single statement.
That Ananya, Venkat, and Divya have taken this raga — a raga composed by a legend — into their hands and played it with this level of care is not something I take lightly.
Ananya, Venkat & Divya
These three have been part of the Saraswati School of Music family for eight to ten years. They have performed together at Lamplighter School and at private gatherings across the Dallas area — quiet, dignified performances that represent exactly what the guru-shishya tradition asks of students: sincerity, consistency, and the willingness to keep showing up year after year.
At the intermediate-to-advanced level they occupy, playing Jhala cleanly — with proper separation, speed, and breath — is a genuine and hard-earned milestone. Watching them work through Raga Yamani together, in a class session, with that level of ease and musicality, is the kind of moment that makes years of teaching feel like the most worthwhile thing in the world.
Congratulations, Ananya, Venkat, and Divya. 🙏🏼
If you're curious about beginning your own sitar journey — or bringing it to this level — sitar classes are open in Flower Mound / Dallas and online worldwide via Zoom.