THE LAST DISCIPLE
RISHAB RIKHIRAM SHARMA
The musician who focusses on mental health
Born into a family of musical instrument makers called the Rikhirams, who opened a store in Lahore in 1920 and moved to India after Partition, Rishab Rikhiram Sharma, 23, is the fourth-generation of instrument makers and the only one in his family to have performed onstage.
Rishab was 10 when he picked up the sitar, his father his first teacher. He then started classes with Pan dit Ravi Shankar at the age of 12.
THE LEGACY LIVES ON
“Guruji was 90 and told me I would be his last disciple, the only one from my generation he was teaching, and hence, I had to carry the legacy forward,” says Rishab.
Rishab rose to fame during his Sitar for Mental Health live music sessions from his bedroom at the end of 2020. “That was the first time I was vuln erable in front of my followers and wasn’t just posting sitar videos,” he says.”I started doing rooms on Clubhouse and Instagram Lives to battle my own anxiety. My therapist also recommended it.”
Soon after, he found his DMs flooded with messages about the calming effect his music was having on people; he also got requests for tributes to loved ones his followers had lost.
“This tightened the community, and we went from 10-15 people tuning in, to 600K. That’s when my following grew, and so, gave me the opportunity to do a tour in India,” says Rishab, who also feels responsible for taking forward his familial legacy of making sitars. In fact, he
“THE FACT THAT CLASSICAL MUSIC IS GOOD FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH IS A 5,000-YEAROLD TRADITION. I’M JUST BRINGING IT INTO FOCUS AND PUTTING IT IN MORE RELEVANT TERMS.” —RISHAB RIKHIRAM SHARMA, MUSICIAN
has plans to do limited-edition designer sitars, and is also working on a new type of electric guitar, he tells us right after finishing his in-person Sitar for Mental Health concerts across India.
Since the music content creation universe is still in the reactive stage, there’s no formula yet for what works and what doesn’t. “The fact that classical music is good for your mental health is a 5,000-yearold tradition. I’m just bringing it into focus and putting it in more relevant terms for Gen-Z and millennials,” says Rishab.
ATTENTION PLEASE
“Songs were five to six minutes long. Now, they’re a maximum of three minutes. Because that’s the maximum attention span you can get from someon e today. People are just making songs for those short videos so that people can use them. Which is great because artistes like Yeat who went viral with their TikTok audios are now touring the world,” says Rishab.
As a Gen-Zer who listens to Hindustani classical music and loves hip-hop, Rishab claims he’s in a weird place. “The classical audience is conservative. And I’m very modern an d make beats. You can’t please everyone. Your niche will get narrower, but if you are building a strong support system around you, there’s no need to be anxious about losing followers or embarrassing yourself,” he says. This works only if you have your basics in place: Rishab ensures he doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to doubt his ability to play a raga properly.
As a content creator you hold the responsibility to broadcast correct content because you have influence. “If I say I am playing Raga Yaman an d play something completely off, people will believe me and when they actually hear the real thing, they won’t even know it,” explains Rishab.