I would love to hear from you!
Please do get in touch with Nicolas with
• feedback about this site
• questions about the sarangi and learning sarangi
• enquiries about sarangi lessons or
• Hindustani singing or other instrument lessons in London or via Skype,
• solo sarangi concerts,
• accompaniment of Hindustani vocal music or dance,
• lecture demonstrations or
• recording for film, theatre or fusion projects.
And please let me know if you have any issues concerning media displayed on this site. Many thanks!
The Sarangi
The sarangi (सारंगी) is the quintessential bowed instrument of South Asian art music. Its name is widely believed to mean "a hundred colours" suggesting its adaptability to a wide range of musical styles, its flexible pitch, and its ability to produce a large palette of tonal colour and rich emotional nuance.
The sarangi is revered for its uncanny capacity to imitate the timbre and inflections of the human voice as well as for the intensity of emotional expression to which it lends itself. In the words of Sir Yehudi Menuhin: "The sarangi remains not only the authentic and original Indian bowed stringed instrument but the one which... expresses the very soul of Indian feeling and thought."
Nicolas Magriel
Nicolas Magriel has been playing the sarangi since 1970. He has spent around twelve years in India studying the sarangi and Hindustani vocal music and also doing research on Indian music. During the 1980s he performed widely in Britain and in Europe both as a soloist and as an accompanist to Hindustani vocal music and kathak dance.
His sarangi can be heard on several film and television soundtracks including The Jewel in the Crown, End of Empire and The Great Gatsby. He has collaborated with pop musicians including George Harrison, Voice of the Beehiv, the Sunsa of Arqa, the Bangles, and Take That. Having completed his PhD on sarangi style at the University of London in 2001, much of the new millenium has been spent on two AHRC-funded research projects, The songs of Khayal, an in-depth two-volume study of Hindustani vocal compositions, and Growing into Music for which he produced seven films on musical enculturation in Hindustani, Rajasthani and Qawwali traditions. His definitive work on all things sarangi, Sarangi Style in Hindustani Music ,was published in 2021, and a South-Asian edition is forthcoming.