Arvind Parikh, a Padma Bhushan awardee, plays which of the following musical instruments?

Correct — C. Arvind Parikh is a sitar player, a senior disciple of Ustad Vilayat Khan and a musician of the Imdadkhani, or Etawah, gharana.

The three rejected names come from different instrument families altogether: a bowed string, a bamboo flute and a pair of drums.

Place him by his guru and his gharana, which is how Hindustani instrumentalists are normally identified — option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Sarangi — Sarangi is bowed, not plucked — a short-necked fiddle played with a horsehair bow. It belongs to a different family from the sitar and to different players.
• (b)
  Bansuri — Bansuri is the side-blown bamboo flute, a wind instrument. Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pannalal Ghosh are the names it carries.
• (d)
  Tabla — Tabla is a pair of hand drums, percussion rather than strings. Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain are its best-known names.

Hindustani music items pair a musician with an instrument, and the reliable filing system is the gharana.

The Imdadkhani, or Etawah, gharana is a sitar and surbahar lineage: Imdad Khan, then Inayat Khan, then Vilayat Khan — and among Vilayat Khan's disciples, Arvind Parikh.

Store instrumentalists inside these lineages rather than as loose names, because SSC will hand you an unfamiliar musician against four instruments, and the lineage is what places him.

Key facts

• Arvind Parikh is a sitar player of the Imdadkhani (Etawah) gharana and a senior disciple of Ustad Vilayat Khan.
• The sitar is a plucked, fretted, long-necked lute carrying sympathetic strings that sound without being played.
• Sarangi is bowed, bansuri is a bamboo flute, and tabla is a pair of hand drums.

Common traps

• Guessing from the sound of the name instead of recalling the lineage.
• Assuming an unfamiliar Hindustani name must belong to a vocalist rather than an instrumentalist.

No directly related past PYQ was found.