Sitar gharanas explained
A gharana (from ghar, house) is a lineage of musicians who share a way of playing, handed down from teacher to student — often within a family, always through years of direct teaching. A gharana isn't a school you enrol in or a genre. It's closer to an accent: recognisable in which ragas are favoured, how phrases are shaped, how the instrument is set up and what counts as good technique.
Two gharanas dominate modern sitar playing, and they're the ones most people mean when they compare "Ravi Shankar style" with "Vilayat Khan style": the Maihar gharana and the Etawah, or Imdadkhani, gharana.
The Maihar gharana
The Maihar gharana is named for the princely state of Maihar in central India, where Ustad Allauddin Khan was court musician. He had studied with Wazir Khan of Rampur, a player of the been (rudra veena) in the Senia tradition that traces itself to the court musician Tansen — so the gharana is sometimes called Maihar-Senia.
Allauddin Khan's students shaped twentieth-century Indian instrumental music: his son Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), his daughter Annapurna Devi (surbahar), and the sitarists Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee.
The sound:
- A dhrupad approach to alap. Long, slow, structured exploration of the raga's notes, register by register, drawing on the been and dhrupad.
- Use of the low register. The sitar's bass strings (kharaj) are used to play deep, grave alap. Maihar sitars typically carry them, and often an upper gourd.
- Rhythmic jod and jhala as structural sections, followed by a composition (gat) and fast improvisation.
- Instrumental (tantrakari) clarity. Strokes and rhythmic patterns are part of the beauty, not something hidden.
The Etawah (Imdadkhani) gharana
The Etawah gharana takes its names from the town of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, associated with the family's early generations, and from Ustad Imdad Khan, a celebrated sitar and surbahar player. His son Enayat Khan and grandsons Vilayat Khan (sitar) and Imrat Khan (surbahar and sitar) carried it forward, and today players such as Shahid Parvez Khan, Shujaat Khan and Budhaditya Mukherjee represent it.
The sound:
- Gayaki ang — the singing style. Vilayat Khan developed a way of playing that imitates the human voice, especially the khayal singer: long phrases on a single stroke, deep meends, notes that swell and fade. The goal is a sitar that sings.
- Wide meends. Etawah players pull the string across the fret for very long glides, several notes at a time.
- A different instrument setup. Vilayat Khan's sitar drops the bass (kharaj) strings, uses a different tuning, and often has no upper gourd.
- Less emphasis on the low register, more on the melody string's singing middle and upper range.
Hear the difference in miniature
These are crude sketches on Sitarpedia's sampled sitar — real playing in either gharana is far subtler — but the contrast is the one to listen for in recordings: how many notes per stroke, and how much of the line glides. The what is meend guide explains the glide.
Maihar vs Etawah at a glance
| Maihar | Etawah (Imdadkhani) | |
|---|---|---|
| Founding figure | Allauddin Khan | Imdad Khan |
| Best-known sitarists | Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee | Vilayat Khan, Shahid Parvez Khan |
| Model | Dhrupad and the been | Khayal singing |
| Alap | Long, systematic, using the bass register | Vocal, flowing, middle and upper register |
| Instrument | Bass strings, often two gourds | No bass strings, often one gourd |
| Signature | Range, structure, rhythmic sections | Meend, sustain, gayaki ang |
Other lineages
These two aren't the only ones. Other families and teaching lines have produced important sitarists, and many players today learn from teachers of more than one tradition. Gharana history also involves a great deal of oral tradition, and specific claims about who learned what from whom are often debated. What's safe to say is that the styles are real, actively taught and audible to a trained ear.
How a gharana is passed on
A gharana survives through the guru-shishya relationship: a teacher (guru) and a student (shishya) working together for years. Traditionally the student lived with the teacher's family, served the household, and learned by listening, imitating and practising for many hours a day. Compositions, techniques and even ways of tuning were taught directly and often privately, which is why gharanas stayed distinct. The course's lesson on the guru-shishya relationship explains how this works today, when most students have jobs and many learn online.
Does a learner need to choose?
Not at the start. The basics — sitting, strokes, swaras, ragas, rhythm — are shared. If you study with a teacher, you'll learn their gharana's approach, and your sitar may be set up accordingly. Sitarpedia teaches the shared foundations and uses the Maihar-style (kharaj-pancham) tuning, because it's the more common setup on beginner instruments.
How to listen
Pick one raga — Yaman is ideal — and find a recording by a Maihar sitarist and one by an Etawah sitarist. Listen to the first five minutes of each. Notice the register, the number of strokes, the length of the glides. You don't need to know the names of what you hear; noticing is enough. The famous sitar players guide suggests whom to start with.