Kashmir's Last Santoor Artisan: Ghulam Mohammad Zaz's Search for a Successor

Eight Generations of Craft, With No One to Follow

Ghulam Mohammad Zaz is in his eighties, still making santoors by hand in Srinagar's old city, and still searching for someone to inherit the knowledge his family has carried for at least eight generations. As of July 27, 2025, the artisan widely believed to be Kashmir's last traditional santoor maker faces a problem that national recognition has not solved: no one in his family or community is willing to learn his craft.

Zaz received the Padma Shri in 2023 for his contribution to the arts. India's fourth highest civilian honor recognized a lifetime spent building instruments associated with some of the country's most distinguished musicians. Yet the future of his workshop in Zaina Kadal depends on something more practical than an award: a learner prepared to spend time with wood, strings and sound.

His family has made santoors and rababs for more than three centuries. Zaz is also believed possibly to be the last artisan anywhere in India making the santoor entirely by hand. The instrument, traditionally fitted with 100 strings, holds a central place in Kashmiri Sufi and folk music.

The workshop sits among the winding lanes of the old city. Its dim interior, blackened walls, worn tools and aged walnut wood hold the traces of generations of work. Beside unfinished instruments, Zaz continues a trade that once supported his household and now produces only a handful of instruments each year.

His story brings together several pressures: shrinking demand, cheaper instruments made by machines, difficulty finding traditional materials and a younger generation drawn toward other music. The immediate concern is how the skill of making a santoor will pass from one pair of hands to another.

A Family History Built Into Every Instrument

Zaz learned instrument making from his father and grandfather and made his first santoor at 15. Their teaching connected the practical work of cutting and joining wood with the sound a musician would eventually draw from it.

The family's history stretches back to ancestors summoned by local kings to make instruments that could "soothe hearts." Over more than 300 years, its santoors and rababs reached distinguished musicians across the Kashmir Valley. Zaz's workshop carries that history in its tools, its unfinished work and the instruments that have left it.

Zaz described the lessons he received from his father and grandfather as a form of listening as much as construction:

They taught me not just how to make an instrument but how to listen—to the wood, the air, and the hands that would play it,

For decades, this knowledge provided a stable livelihood. Zaz built a home, educated his three daughters and developed a reputation that brought customers from across India and abroad. The craft was both a family inheritance and the work that paid for family life.

Today, his age and the scarcity of raw materials limit production. Much of his business comes from tourists and foreign customers, while repairs to other stringed instruments supplement his income. The workshop remains active, but its future has become tied to the search for a successor.

What Gives the Santoor Its Sound?

The santoor is a hammered dulcimer, a stringed instrument played by striking its strings rather than plucking them or drawing a bow across them. Its body is shaped like a trapezoid, with one pair of parallel sides, and the player uses two curved mallets called mezrabs.

The instrument's clear, bell-like tones have been part of Kashmiri musical life for centuries. It is central to Sufiana Mausiqi, the region's Sufi musical tradition, and to folk performances. Its name comes from the Persian word for "a hundred strings," and its origins reach back to Persia and Central Asia.

The santoor traveled across continents and developed distinct forms in Iran, China and Europe. In Kashmir, it acquired a particular place in local musical culture. The traditional Kashmiri instrument uses seasoned mulberry or walnut wood, with 100 strings arranged in groups across 25 carefully made bridges.

A bridge supports the strings and helps carry their vibrations into the wooden body. The hollow body acts as a resonator: it makes the vibrations audible as a fuller musical sound. The choice of wood, the position of the bridges and the arrangement of the strings therefore belong to the same task of shaping the instrument's voice.

How Two Musicians Took the Santoor Across the World

Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and Pandit Bhajan Sopori played a major role in bringing the santoor to international audiences. Both used instruments made by Zaz and his family, linking the Srinagar workshop to performances far beyond Kashmir.

Sharma adapted the instrument for Indian classical music by adding strings, redesigning bridges for richer resonance and developing new playing techniques. Those changes expanded its tonal range, meaning the range of musical tones it could produce, and gave performers more ways to express musical phrases.

The santoor gained a place alongside instruments such as the sitar and sarod in classical concerts. Its sound also reached Bollywood soundtracks. The work of Sharma and Sopori helped turn an instrument rooted in Kashmiri tradition into one recognized by listeners around the world.

Zaz credited the two musicians with sustaining his craft when speaking to Moneycontrol:

If my craft is alive today, it is because legends like Pt Sharma and Pt Sopori infused new life into the santoor,

They both played the santoor throughout the world to make it a famous musical instrument.

That wider recognition has coexisted with falling demand for handmade santoors. The instrument can be known across the world while the workshop that supplies it struggles to attract enough customers and a new maker. For Zaz, performance and construction remain closely connected: musicians give the instrument an audience, while artisans give musicians something to play.

Four Years for the Wood, Months for the Work

A santoor begins with wood that has been aged and seasoned for at least four years. Seasoning means allowing wood to dry before it is used. Zaz selects mulberry or walnut, both valued for their resonance, and prepares the material before cutting and joining it at precise angles.

He carves the hollow body, shapes and places the bridges, and adds the strings. The traditional form has 100 strings and 25 bridges; Zaz's construction process is also described as involving more than 100 strings, each carefully tuned. The work can take two to three months, depending on his mood and energy.

Zaz uses a homemade polish to finish the surface and keep the keys from becoming slippery. The process combines patience and precision with judgments developed over a lifetime, including decisions about how the wood will respond when the instrument is played.

Speaking to Indian Express, Zaz explained how he approaches those decisions:

The wood speaks to me,

I don't use any tool for measurements, relying on my heart and mind.

The four years spent preparing wood and the months spent making an instrument help explain why this is a demanding craft to inherit. An apprentice would need to learn the sequence of construction and the listening skills that guide Zaz through it.

Traditional Materials Are Becoming Harder to Find

The Zaz family once decorated its instruments with ivory and horns from the hangul, the Kashmiri stag. Today, Zaz uses sheep horn because the traditional materials have become scarce. Elephant tusk is now banned, adding a legal restriction to the changes in what makers can obtain.

The playing stick, also called a qalam, presents another problem. It is made from a special dried wood found only in Kashmir, which is now nearly impossible to source. The difficulty reaches beyond the body of the santoor to the tools a musician needs to play it.

Mulberry, walnut, horn and the wood used for the qalam each serve a different purpose. A shortage of any one of them can alter the work or make it harder to complete. Zaz's reduced output reflects the combined effects of growing older and finding suitable materials less easily.

His use of sheep horn shows that the workshop has already changed some of its practices as materials have become unavailable. Preserving the craft involves passing on knowledge about these choices as well as the older methods.

Changing Tastes and the Economics of Making

Cheaper instruments made by machines have flooded the market and can be produced more quickly than handmade santoors. For a maker whose work takes months, that competition puts pressure on a business built around time, careful preparation and individual craftsmanship.

Younger people in Kashmir are increasingly drawn to hip hop, rap and electronic music. Traditional forms such as Sufiana Mausiqi face a shrinking audience, which also reduces the pool of people likely to buy traditional instruments or learn how to make them.

Zaz described his concern about those changing preferences:

The new generation is not interested in playing traditional musical instruments,

They prefer a different genre of music because they do not understand the value of traditional music.

No one in his family or community is willing to take up the craft. That absence creates a direct threat to the continuity of an occupation handed down through at least eight generations. Orders and repairs can keep the workshop working today, while teaching would give it a future beyond its present maker.

Zaz's experience brings the economic and cultural pressures together. Fewer listeners can mean fewer customers. Lower prices for instruments made by machines make the long process of hand construction harder to sustain. Scarce materials and the absence of apprentices add further strain.

A National Honor and an Unfinished Wish

The Padma Shri awarded in 2023 brought Zaz pride, along with regret that earlier generations of his family could not share the occasion. Photographs in his workshop show him receiving the award from President Droupadi Murmu. Other images show Shiv Kumar Sharma and Bhajan Sopori performing with his instruments.

Zaz told The New Indian Express why the timing of the recognition mattered to him:

I would have been happier had the award come earlier, when my grandfather, father, and uncles—those who shaped me as a craftsman—could have witnessed it,

Two dates frame the current account of his work:

• 2023: Zaz received the Padma Shri for his contribution to the arts.
• July 27, 2025: In his eighties, he continued making instruments in Zaina Kadal without a successor willing to learn.

Zaz places his deepest satisfaction in making an instrument, rather than in fame or awards. He described the relationship between craftsmanship and sound in these words:

This is not just woodwork,

It is poetry. A language. A tongue I give to the instrument. I hear the santoor before it plays. That is the secret. That is what must be passed on.

Government grants have been offered and apprentices promised, but Zaz remains skeptical. His priority is someone committed to learning the work:

I am not looking for fame or charity. What I truly want is someone to carry the art forward. Not for the money, not for the cameras, but for the music.

Other Kashmiri Crafts Face Similar Pressures

Kashmir's wood carving, papier-mâché, pashmina shawls and intricate embroidery have also faced pressure from modernization and mass production. Traditions that helped define the region's identity are losing the steady transfer of skills from older makers to younger learners.

Ali Mohammad Giru, who practices khatamband woodwork, Mohammad Hanief, who makes turquoise jewelry, and carpet weaver Bashir Ahmad Dar share concerns about dwindling apprenticeships and uncertain futures. Their experiences place Zaz's situation within a wider crisis affecting traditional crafts in Kashmir and across India.

Sahapedia, a platform dedicated to Indian heritage, described the danger created by the weakening transfer of knowledge:

The survival of these ancient crafts is now in jeopardy as the tradition of passing down skills through generations fades,

Kani shawl weaving has seen a modest resurgence through renewed interest and government support. Many other crafts remain endangered. The contrast shows how uneven the situation is: some traditions are gaining fresh attention while others struggle to find the next generation of practitioners.

Preservation Depends on Someone Learning the Work

Government grants, handicraft department initiatives and greater media attention have been used to support the santoor and other traditional crafts. Social media influencers and journalists have visited Zaz's workshop and shared his story with audiences around the world.

Publicity can bring people to the workshop, but Zaz's central request remains a person willing to learn. The proposed approaches to reviving interest include teaching traditional crafts in schools, providing apprenticeships and making raw materials accessible. Collaborations with contemporary musicians and designers have also been suggested as ways to connect older forms with new audiences.

Those ideas address different parts of the same difficulty. School teaching could introduce children to the craft; an apprenticeship would provide time beside an experienced maker; access to materials would allow the work to continue. As of July 27, 2025, no successor or timetable for passing on Zaz's skills had been identified.

Zaz continues spending his days beside unfinished santoors, aware that the work requires time from both maker and learner. His closing wish is expressed in the same terms he uses for the craft itself:

Wood and music, both die if you don't give them time,

I want someone who truly loves the craft to take it forward.

Key Points

• Ghulam Mohammad Zaz, in his eighties, is widely believed to be Kashmir's last traditional santoor maker, and possibly India's last artisan making it entirely by hand.
• His family has made instruments for more than 300 years, across at least eight generations.
• The traditional Kashmiri santoor has 100 strings and 25 bridges and is central to Sufi and folk music.
• Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and Pandit Bhajan Sopori helped bring the instrument to international audiences.
• Wood is seasoned for at least four years, and construction can take two to three months.
• Cheaper instruments, changing musical tastes, scarce materials and a lack of apprentices threaten the craft.
• Zaz received the Padma Shri in 2023, but his search for a successor remained unresolved on July 27, 2025.