Reeta Das plays sarod at a concert. Telegraph picture

Patna, Nov. 26: Reeta Das is an artiste with a rare feat. She is the only known woman sarod player from Bihar.

Reeta, who has performed at several national events, feels classical music has a niche audience. It has its selected followers, but that doesn’t affect the popularity of classical music or artistes. In Reeta’s words, “as long as spirituality is alive, classical music would not die”.

Reeta, who has been playing sarod since the age of 12, said classical music enjoys better following outside Bihar. “Right now there might not be many followers of this genre of music in the state, but a time will come when the youth would start taking interest in the sarod and would devote time to it,” said Das.

Reeta has been playing the sarod for 25 years. She was first trained by her father Chandrakant Lal Das.

Later on, she was trained under the nephew of Acharya Alaudin Khan, Ustad Bahadur Khan. Pandit Sunil Mukherjee and Ustad Ashish Khan have also trained Reeta.

Talking about her sarod practice, she said: “Just like in meditation, there is a lot of practice involved in playing the sarod as well. An artiste needs to practice a single swar for hours — the journey in classical music is very long and recognition does not come immediately.”

Reeta, who is also the head of the postgraduate department of music at JD Women’s College, has performed all across the country.

She has performed at several concerts like the Bodhgaya Mahotsava, Kesariya Mahotsava and Vaishali Mahotsava held in Bihar. She has also performed at the Shimoga festival in Karnataka for four continuous hours. At the event, she was accompanied by a violinist and mridangam and tabla players.

At a programme organised by the state government — Power of Joy — she participated in a fusion of sarod flute, synthesiser, pad and tabla.

Last month, Reeta performed at the auditorium of Pandit Kishan Maharaj in Banaras. Late Kishan Maharaj’s son, Pandit Pooran Maharaj, accompanied her on the tabla.

Reeta has been awarded the Nad Shree Award by the India Habitat Centre, Delhi.

The central human resource development (HRD) department also awarded her with a scholarship in 2000.

When asked about the reasons why not many artistes opt to play sarod, Reeta quipped that perhaps “because the instrument is very heavy”. Made of teakwood, a sarod weighs around 10kg to 12kg. On a serious note, she said, sarod is a difficult instrument to learn. “It takes at least three years to learn the basics of sarod like the sargam, palta and alankar. After mastering the basics, come the ragas,” she said.

Back in 2000, when the HRD awarded me the scholarship, there were only six sarod players in the country. Among the six, there were only four female sarod players and I was the only one from Bihar.”