KARACHI: It is no mean feat to create a musical instrument. Not only does it require a profound understanding of the art of music but also an in-depth knowhow of how string or wind instruments work.

Eminent lawyer and musicologist Raza Kazim has developed this amazing instrument called the sagar veena, which his daughter Noor Zehra Kazim plays with remarkable poise and grace. Therefore, it was no surprise when on Friday the Zia Mohyeddin Theatre at the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) received a discerning audience to listen to her.

Proceeding began when Napa chief executive Junaid Zuberi introduced the artist. He said Raza Kazim’s family is blessed because its members have a sense of music higher than the average person; and Noor stands as a paragon of artistic excellence.

Noor then appeared on stage and told the attendees that the instrument that she managed to get in Karachi was a smaller version of the original. That fact aside, her rendition of raga bageshri was splendid. She played with the kind of composure and feeling that’s required for such arrangements of notes, especially the ones that signify melancholia.

After that, Noor’s sister, Baela Jamil, held the microphone and gave a presentation on the origin and development of the sagar veena. She said Mr Kazim wanted more space than a human voice could provide because the latter had limitations. So the instrument that he came up with had more timbres and resonances. “Sagar in Sanskrit means ocean and veena is the generic name for a string instrument.”

Noor added her opinion to the presentation and also spoke about the human element of the whole exercise. She said her father was perturbed when he figured out that her children, who were teenagers at the time, were completely immersed in western pop asking for LPs of the likes of the Beatles and Joan Baez.

“He liked all of them but couldn’t comprehend that the children weren’t connected to their own music. Being a lawyer he just took it up as a case. That’s where his actual journey starts. His emotional reason for taking this on was something that’s valid.

“Music is a means to find out through ragas what human structures we have. Music makes you identify what your emotions are and what you’re capable of. Raza has worked to find out the intellectual input that’s gone into it and bring it back to present times.

“With the tools that are available today, it’s possible to reconnect with our heritage, the work that’s already been done by the human mind thousands of years ago. We don’t have to be consumers of music. We can understand it like we understand other phenomena in nature… It’s time to become intelligent about music. That is why the effort was made to bring the sagar veena to the level of rationality,” she said.

In between the conversation, members of the audience asked questions, replying to one of which Noor said people should come up with an initiative and take the instrument forward.

She rounded off the evening with another short and sweet piece of composition on the sagar veena.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2024