Radio de Pandit Shivkumar Sharma

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma (born January 13, 1938) is an Indian classical musician, of Hindustani classical music tradition. He is a master of the santoor, a folk instrument from the valley of Kashmir. It is a type of hammered dulcimer whose strings are struck with a pair of light carved wooden mallets. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the santoor or shata-tantri veena as it was called in earlier times, was used as an accompaniment to a specific type of singing called sufiana mausiqi. When Pandit Uma Dutt Sharma, a renowned vocalist from Jammu and a disciple of Pandit Bade Ramdasji of Benares gharana discovered the instrument, he became interested by its possibilities. After extensive research on the instrument he passed on to his only son Shivkumar the responsibility of establishing it on the concert platform.