On 26 May the city of Shenzhen in southeast China experienced a most singular artistic event: a solo performance by Noor Zehra Kazim on the Sagar Veena, an instrument designed specifically for her by her father the renowned lawyer, intellectual, and advocate for democracy Raza Kazim. It was the latest stage in a long odyssey. Noor Zehra was yet in her teens when her extraordinary musical journey commenced.
Born into a household that shone with scholarship, culture, musical appreciation and expertise, the context is not surprising. Her mother Kishwar herself possessed a liltingly lovely voice into her eldest days. Raza wanted to create and perfect an instrument of classical music – South Asian Classical Music – to capture and surpass the range and quality of the human voice as no instrument had done before.
In 1970, to counter the ‘invasion’ of western popular music, he arranged for his four children to be tutored in sitar, tabla, and vocal music by Ustad Nisar Husain. Realising soon that Noor Zehra was more attuned to low rather than high tempo instruments, Raza switched her training to the ‘bass sitar’: the Surbahar (or Kachuwa); and then to the unfretted Vichitra Veena, believed to have been invented in the early 20th century by Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan, the word having a myriad of meanings – “wonderful, surprising, beautiful” inter alia. As it was however difficult to keep the single raag traditionally taught in tune without frets, Raza removed these from th.