American sarod player Ken Zuckerman died on Wednesday at 3.30 am in Basel, Switzerland. He was 72.
Zuckerman’s death was confirmed by fellow sarod player Shiraz Ali Khan in a Facebook post.
Zuckerman’s oeuvre includes several cultural crossover projects like the Grammy-nominated albums Diaspora Sefardi and Indian Ragas & Medieval Song.
Born in the United States, Zuckerman’s early life saw him dabble in singing, piano and guitar. His family appreciated music but didn’t aspire to become musicians. When asked about his connection to music, his father humorously claimed that he played the tape recorder..
At 20, Zuckerman attended his first Indian classical concert at his college in Iowa, featuring Ali Akbar Khan and Shankar Ghosh. The experience profoundly impacted him, leading him to enroll at the Ali Akbar Music College in California, where he became a disciple of Khan.
Zuckerberg spent 37 years being trained by Khan. He began playing the sitar for a year but later switched to the sarod.
“I am so lucky that my first contact in Indian classical music was with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,” he had said after Khan’s death. “Who could I have asked for a better teacher but him? I still share a deep bond with him and for me, he will be alive.”
In 1985, Khan founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Basel and asked Zuckerman to run it.
Zuckerman made significant contributions to the development of India’s traditional instruments, including integrating precision-geared tuners into the traditional pegs of the sarod and tanpura, introducing wooden resonators to enhance the volume and tonal quality of the sarod and developing a device to allow for precise micro-adjustments in the instrument’s bridge placement.
One of Zuckerman’s most notable inventions is “Shanti”, an automatic tanpura-playing device.