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This Article is From Sep 14, 2010

Students flock to Thailand to master the sitar

Bangkok: Australian Gregory Reid played rhythm guitar in a rock band for more than 10 years. He recently travelled to India to buy a sitar. Now, he's enrolled in sitar lessons - not in India, but in Bangkok.

Reid who stays in Bangkok began his sitar lessons six weeks ago. He admits the instrument is a huge challenge, but that's what makes it so satisfying.

"It takes a lot of dedication, and that's what actually inspired me to pick it up, was the amount of discipline that it takes to learn the instrument, which is a different way of looking at it rather than being a musical way of looking at it, like the discipline of it," Reid said.

The sound of the sitar almost automatically summons up visions of India. But it's in Thailand that droves of young students are turning up and tuning in.

At his studio in Bangkok Sitar teacher Subrata De does his best to make it look easy for his international group of students.

"If you sing through your heart, the finger can give you the commands. Like a mouse, every computer have commands to give this. So here, you value singing, your fingers should reach particular notes, on that time," he said.

De has been playing the sitar for 40 years now, he started when he was just seven. He studied under a sitar master in India.

According to De, Indian and Thai classical music share a lot in common. Some traditional Thai compositions are based on five-note ascending and descending ragas, just like sitar music.

Today he says he is inspired by helping to promote classical sitar music because it gives people a chance to learn about his homeland, India.

Wherever De practices, performs or teaches, he keeps a painting of the Hindu goddess Saraswati playing a sitar close by.

These foreigners might never become as skilled as their teacher, but they are following a long tradition of foreigners who been seduced by the sound.

Arguably the most famous is former Beatle George Harrison who travelled to India to take master lessons from the acclaimed Ravi Shankar in the 1960.

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