‘I don’t worry about traditionalists’: Rishab Sharma, the sitar maestro earning millions of followers for his mindful music

‘I want to be the slowest sitarist on the planet,” Rishab Sharma says. “Everyone is trying their gimmicks and playing as fast as they can but I want to provide a sense of comfort and peace when we’re so busy and full of anxiety.” The youngest of Ravi Shankar’s sitar disciples, 27-year-old Sharma has spent the past five years transforming the ancient Indian classical instrument into a tool for wellbeing. Billed as “Sitar for Mental Health”, Sharma’s live project features group breathing exercises, meditation and intermission talking prompts, while his repertoire includes everything from traditional ragas to Bollywood songs and versions of the Game of Thrones and Harry Potter themes. It’s a distinctive blend that has gained him more than four million Instagram followers and 60m streams. “The mission is to introduce every soul on the planet to the sound of the sitar,” Sharma says. “We toured India for three months and often had four generations of family members coming along. Now I want to spread it to western audiences and share this instrument that has helped me heal.” Sitting in the plush lobby of a London hotel while on a European tour – he’s playing three big UK venues in October – Sharma doesn’t look like your typical Indian classical musician. Dressed down in a cap and denim shirt and sporting intricate henna designs on the backs of his hands, he explains how his grandfather’s death in 2020 led him to view his instrument differently. “My grandfather was like a third parent to me and when he died I was completely broken,” Sharma says. “I stopped playing sitar, I wasn’t eating properly and I often didn’t get out of bed. My friends suggested I go to therapy but since it was the pandemic, I couldn’t get any appointments.” Sharma languished for months before remembering his grandfather’s enthusiasm for the sitar. “He would clap along while I played and loved it when I performed bhajans [devotional songs],” Sharma says. “I decided to pick it up again, and this time, as I played through the ragas I knew, I felt myself calm down. It was like I was plucking notes from the air to play for him. And when I finished, I was more like myself again.” Taking to the audio social media platform Clubhouse, Sharma began streaming his sitar sessions alongside free-flowing conversation about his grief. “I watched it grow as I logged on every day for a year, playing and talking to strangers, which felt easier than sharing how I felt with friends,” he says. “By the end of the year we had 4,000 people tuning in and I had so many DMs from people telling me not to stop since it was helping with their grief, too. Something about the music just resonated.” Towards the end of 2021, Sharma held his first Sitar for Mental Health concert for 30 people at a yoga studio in New York, where he had been living as a student. In the four years since, he has played to more than 75,000 people across India as well as to Joe Biden at the White House, and has released genre-crossing singles such as the trap bass-referencing 2021 track Chankaya, 2023’s electronic percussion-laden Kautilya (The Echo Project) and the lo-fi hip-hop influenced 2024 track Text Me When You Reach. Growing up in Delhi in a family of sitar makers stretching back three generations, Sharma became the final student, aged 12, of the then 89-year-old sitar pioneer Ravi Shankar. “My father made guruji Ravi Shankar’s sitars and my grandfather even sold sitars to the Beatles when they came to visit India in the 60s,” he says. “I learned guitar as a child, and at 11 my father let me try one of his sitars. It felt so instinctual – I could immediately feel my way around the sargam scale. A few months later, someone recorded a video of me playing at a small show and guruji saw it.” Shankar invited Sharma to play for him and spotted his potential, immediately offering to be his guru. “It was like God offering to teach you,” Sharma says. “From then on, I spent six hours a day after school practising with him. He could be very stern and strict when we were playing, but as soon as he put the sitar down he was so friendly and always told so many dirty jokes! He was like India’s only rock star.” After two years of tutelage – Shankar died in 2012 – Sharma continued his training with elder disciples. Today, he finds himself motivated by Shankar’s genre-bending legacy. “I always think, ‘What would guruji say if he heard what I’m playing?’ and ‘What would the 13-year-old me like to hear?’” he says. “As long as those responses are positive, then I don’t have to worry about what the traditionalists might say about me mixing styles or using sitar for mental health.” In fact, Sharma has been researching the ancient Ayurvedic idea of Raga Chikitsa, which posits that musical vibrations can facilitate different moods. It forms the basis of the debut album he is currently writing, while he is also working on making a line of affordable sitars. “I want to create sitars at the same price as guitars, so lots more kids can have access to them,” he says. “It’s an instrument of great power that needs to be shared from India to the world.” • Rishab Sharma’s Sitar for Mental Health tour continues at Royal Festival Hall, London, on 1 October; Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on 9 October; and the Lowry, Salford, on 13 October