Sitar

The sitar is a long-necked plucked instrument with a gourd resonator, played seated with a wire plectrum worn on the index finger. It is among the most widely recognised instruments of Hindustani classical music.

Melody strings run over curved metal frets that can be pulled sideways, letting a player bend one fret into several notes. Beneath them lie sympathetic strings that are never struck; they ring on their own and give the sitar its shimmering halo of sound.

In Hindustani classical music the sitar is usually a solo instrument, unfolding a raag slowly in alap before moving into composed and improvised sections accompanied by tabla.

The instrument took shape in north India over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and was developed further in the twentieth by players associated with the Imdadkhani and Maihar lineages.