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Srinagar's oldest santoor maker crafts instruments for India's best musicians
Summary
Ghulam Muhammad Zaz, 85, is the last surviving member and 8th generation of a family known for crafting santoor and rabab for some of India's best known classical musicians
For more than six decades, 85-year-old Ghulam Muhammad Zaz has been diligently crafting classical music instruments like the santoor and rabab by hand in his small workshop on the second floor of a building adjacent to his ancestral home on the banks of the Jhelum in Siraj Bazar of Zaina Kadal in Srinagar’s old city. Having learned the craft from his father, grandfather and uncle in the 1950s, Zaz is now the last surviving member and the eighth generation of a family associated with making these musical instruments.
Famous santoor players including Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Pandit Bhajan Sopori, whose framed photos adorn the workshop walls, have played santoors made by the Zaz family. Both the legendary santoor players went on to popularize the Kashmiri musical instrument across India.
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Wearing a white prayer cap and a ready smile on his face, the octogenarian walks up a wooden staircase everyday to open the door of his workshop filled with tools and wood to make santoors, rababs, and sitars. A small window opens onto the Jhelum below as he sits on a wooden seat. There’s no cushion behind his back, just another wooden plank. He works six hours a day to carve santoors and rababs by hand, taking short breaks. A rabab or a santoor can take two to four months to complete, he says, sometimes even six months, depending on the requirements of musicians. He knows he is done when he is satisfied with the final tuning.
Zaz doesn’t use any machines and likes to work with his hands and his trusted tools. Some of them are over 100 years old and were used by his father and grandfather. “Everything is carved by hand and no nails are used in making santoors," he emphasizes. “I do some carpentry work as well to shape the wood required for making santoors and rababs." Zaz was awarded the Padma Shri last year for his contribution to classical Indian and Kashmiri musical instruments.
“Whatever I have achieved or earned in my life is all because of this small workshop and all these small tools and wooden pieces you see scattered here," the bespectacled octogenarian says. Zaz says when his father, grandfather and uncle were making the instruments through the 1950s and 60s, they had a bigger workshop on the second floor and a shop on the ground floor that displayed finished musical instruments for customers. The Zaz family was well known for musical instruments such as sitar, santoor, dilruba, tanpura, rabab, sarod and sarangi. The shop was eventually closed in the early 1990s after his father passed away and the situation deteriorated in the valley.
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Zaz says they had loyal customers in Kashmir as well as from other states. “Many artists and musicians from Mumbai and Kolkata would often visit the workshop and place orders," he says. “Rabab has come here from Afghanistan but the santoor is purely a Kashmiri musical instrument," claims Zaz. “The traditional Kashmiri santoor has 100 strings." After his father died in the early 1990s, Zaz says he was the only one left in the family to carry forward the family legacy of making musical instruments. His three daughters live elsewhere with their children.
“The new generation is not interested in learning this craft," he rues. “There is a lot of hard work needed to learn this craft," he says. “Not many have the patience to sit for hours to craft a small musical instrument."
Despite being the lone member from his family still making these instruments, Zaz has not thought of retiring or closing his workshop. “This messy workshop is my happy space. It gives me sukoon, peace, like nothing else can."
Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist based in Srinagar.
