The sarangi players are identified as Mirāsī in Hindustani (North Indian classical) music. The Mirāsī (from Arabic mīrās: “inheritance,” “heritage”) are an under-represented caste of Muslim musicians, dancers, genealogists, and other kinds of tradition-bearers. They were central to forming a pluralistic set of cultural practices in North India and Pakistan but have been marginalized socially and economically by Indic caste hierarchical ideologies and British colonial policy. Cultural Anthropologist Eva-Maria van Straaten has offered insights into the interplay of space, experiences, and assumptions surrounding Hindustani instrumental music by adopting “a radically open mode of listening to demonstrate how power relations are sonically negotiated” (2015: 86). Building on van Straaten’s research, this paper illustrates how the dynamics of knowledge and hierarchy are constructed through listening to the sarangi within the musical lineages of Mirāsī, known as Gharana.

This socio-musical analysis examines a sarangi trio recorded at All India Radio in 1970, interpreted from my perspective as the grandson of Sabri Khan (1927-2015), one of the featured performers. My methodology includes interviews with musicians involved in the recording, as well as personal anecdotes and narratives collected during a listening session at Sabri Khan’s home in 2000. Additionally, I draw upon the 13^th-century Sanskrit treatise Saṅgīta-ratnākara to explore the concept of “classicism” in the music of sarangi players. This approach enables me to apply an interactive digital transcription method developed by Professor Dard Neuman at the University of California, Santa Cruz.