Indian sarod maestro Gulfam Ahmed Khan and his troupe took time off from a tour of South Africa to host a workshop for locals here in playing the ancient stringed instrument and the tabla.

Students of the Gujarati community's Shree Bharat Sharda Mandir School and members of the public were enthralled by the advice from the troupe, which also gave a demonstration of the Afghan instrument rabaab, which is similar to the sarod.

"There is more interest and knowledge of the sitar outside India. In India the sitar is played more than the sarod because of a perception that the sarod is more difficult to play," Khan told IANS.

"But that is not so. The sarod is difficult to play initially, but afterwards it is very easy, once one has learnt the basics. With the sitar it is the opposite.

"The sitar is similar to learning to play the guitar, because you first have to learn the chords, whereas the sarod does not have any chords."

The group, brought to South Africa by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and hosted by the Indian mission, performed at major centres in the country. 

"We thought the audience may get bored by our two-hour show but at some venues we had to give in to audience demands and play much later into the night," Khan said.

"At one performance, for instance, an African lady got up and started singing along with a vocalist in our group. She tried to get the tune right. It was quite an impressive effort." 

Khan lamented the declining interest of youth in becoming sarod players.

"The first thing they ask when they come to my school (in Delhi) is: 'Will I be able to give a public performance in a year's time?'

"I tell them that playing music is a lifelong learning experience, not a short-term attempt at stardom through a show, making a CD, or appearing on TV and then fading from the scene."

Khan suggested that a professional player be brought to South Africa for a few months to train locals in playing the sarod.

"We found that the people of Indian origin here have somewhere in their consciousness a greater closeness to India than others," classical musician Kailash Pandey said.

At the workshop salient features of the instrument were explained to the keen participants although there was not a single sarod player among them.

Pandey advised the audience not to let their creativity get bogged down by the technicalities of ragas.

Raju Kala, a classical music enthusiast and distributor of classical CDs, told IANS it was a refreshing change to hear the sarod and rabaab because usually it was mainly the flute and stringed instruments which were heard in South Africa.

"The workshop gave us an insight into how they actually play the instruments with the different sounds and the techniques involved," Kala said.

"I've realised that what you can do on the instruments you can also do with your voice without worrying about the technical training of the old school," said local singer Anita Badal.