When the world identifies you as the last disciple of legendary Indian sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar and great grandson of music instrument creator Pandit Rikhi Ram Sharma, it’s no easy feat to carry the two legacies. Yet, sitarist-musician Rishab Rikhiram Sharma is managing to honour his place in the world of music while carving his own niche.
Counting his blessings and crediting his teachers (gurus) for becoming a name to reckon with, especially after the success of his recent Sitar for Mental Health India Tour, Rishab shares, “There is a lot of self-talk that goes into thinking, if not me then who’s gonna take [the legacy] forward? One is my guru’s legacy and the other is my family’s legacy. I need to carry both of these with equal weight… But, you know, I’m very determined to take it forward… After I lost my guruji (in 2012) – it was a huge loss for the music world and basically it was like the whole industry was orphaned. Death of him and Ustad Zakir Hussain (in 2024) are the two biggest losses, even in our music. When I lost them, I had no role models to look up to. That’s when I looked at myself and thought ‘I’m gonna be that someone who a child would look up to’.”
The same confidence was visible in his twinkling eyes when he was 11 years old and first introduced to Pandit Ravi Shankar. “Imagine an 89 years old man scrolling YouTube, on his iPad, and discovering my video of playing sitar… that’s how he found me… In any field, guru is a person who shows you the light. And the most important thing that my guruji taught me was ‘how to think’. He never asked me to copy him. Viewing music through his lens, I developed my own way of looking at things. Today, my music is a reflection of who I am as a person,” he opines.
“You won’t believe it, there was this one time when I forgot the second half of a [music piece],” he recalls, adding, “That night when I went to bed, guruji came in my dream and reminded me how that composition is to be played. Whether it’s your subconscious mind or whatever, but if you have that connection with your guru then they would even come in your dreams to teach you.”
Setting new grounds by skillfully playing his musical instrument for mental health awareness, he shares how the cause became close to his heart during the Covid-19 pandemic, after he lost his maternal grandfather. “I learnt it the hard way, but my goal was to use music and introduce people to how they can help themselves through anxiety and depression,” says Rishab, revealing how impressed and inspired he is with American rapper-singer Kanye West’s 2018 album, ye. “He is one artiste I would like to mention for coming up with an album on going through a mental illness, which gave me a lot of courage. A musician using music to make noise about mental health… that’s a beautiful thing.”
