Kamal Sabri: Planning to come up with an album with my two sons

While he has been teaching his students online and also working on his album,

sarangi maestro

Kamal Sabri has been paying special attention to the training of his two sons, five-year-old Ahad and three-year-old Asad Sabri. The two have been doing riyaaz with their father for three hours each day, learning to play sarangi,

tabla

and also singing bandishes.
“My elder one has been playing sarangi since he was one-and-half years old and now my three-year-old is picking up sarangi fast. The love for

music

runs in our family, so it is easy to train them,” says Sabri.
During the lockdown, Sabri says, he got to spend a lot of time training his sons and is now planning to work with them on an album together. “Usually, I am busy with my performances and travelling around the world, though I still managed to take out time for my sons’ riyaaz. This year, everything is digital due to the

pandemic

and there isn’t going to be any travelling for a while. So the three of us got a lot of time to do riyaaz together,” says Sabri.
Sabri is “very serious when it comes to my sons’ riyaaz”. “I try to train them – not just how to play the musical instrument, but also the discipline that a musician should inculcate. I got a customised sarangi made for my elder son when he first started playing the instrument, which is now being used by my younger son. Ahad is now training on a medium-sized sarangi which has been at our home, so it is not just the love for music, but even the instrument is passed from one generation to the other,” laughs Sabri, who is hopeful that by next year he would be able to come up with an album with his two sons.

Sabri also shares that one of his albums, which released in May this year (Soulful Duet Volume 3: Legacy), has been listed in the preliminary selections for the Grammys. “It is the preliminary list of nominations and the final list will be announced early next year. For me, it is always an honour to be a part of the prestigious list. We recorded this album last year and had to release it this year digitally due to the lockdown,” says Sabri.