Ram Narayan

Pandit Ram Narayan (25 December 1927 - 9 November 2024) was an Indian musician who popularised the bowed sarangi as a solo concert instrument in Hindustani classical music and became the first internationally successful sarangi player. Born near Udaipur into a family of court musicians, he learned the basics of dhrupad by studying sarangi player Uday Lal of Udaipur at about ten years of age. He later studied khyal and served with travelling singer Madhav Prasad.

All India Radio in Lahore hired Narayan as an accompanist for vocalists in 1944. He accompanied classical singers including Omkarnath Thakur, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Hirabai Badodekar, and Amir Khan. Following the partition of India in 1947, he relocated to Delhi, then moved to Mumbai in 1949 to work in Indian cinema. He became a concert solo artist in 1956, performing at the major music festivals of India.

His first international tour came in 1964 to America and Europe. On his Western tours, he encountered great interest in the sarangi because of its similarity to the cello and violin. He developed a distinctive style featuring extended alap sections with extremely fast sapat tans. His disciples include his daughter Aruna Narayan and grandson Harsh Narayan. He received the Padma Shri (1976), Padma Bhushan (1991), and Padma Vibhushan (2005), India's second-highest civilian honour.