Ustad Bahauddin Dagar is the world’s leading performer of the rudra veena today and the torchbearer of the Dagar vani style of dhrupad, the oldest living form of Indian classical music. 

FourOneOne is honored to present an afternoon performance as part of our ongoing multi-year collaboration with Bahauddin. Since 2023, this collaboration has spanned rehearsals, master classes, publications, live performances, and other forms of cross-stylistic exchange with New York’s many audiences and creative communities. Marking Ustad Dagar’s first return to New York since 2001, the project reconceives the living connection between Dagarvani dhrupad and New York-based audiences and artists, emphasizing social context, history and the creative lives of communities over virtuosity, individual genius, and technique.

Born in Mumbai in 1970, Bahauddin began studying sitar at age seven with his mother, Smt. Pramila Dagar, and later became a student of his father, the illustrious rudra veena player and teacher Ustad Zia Mohiuddin, and his father’s brother, renowned singer Zia Faridudin Dagar. Since his formal debut as a musician in 1990, Bahauddin has become acclaimed for his highly responsive playing style, his expansive, prayerful sound, pursuit of dhrupad’s evolution, and commitment to Dagarvani’s engagement with European and American musicians, composers and audiences.

Dagarvani dhrupad has been practiced for over twenty generations by members of the Dagar family. The rudra veena, one of the oldest string instruments in Hindustani music, was used purely for vocal accompaniment and private study for most of its history. It was only in the twentieth century that Zia Mohiuddin Dagar introduced the rudra veena as a solo instrument for public listening, sparking a revival of the instrument while changing the very nature of its use in performance. Ustad Bahauddin Dagar carries forward this deeply rooted and experimental performance tradition.

With Tejas Tope (pakhawaj) and Ted Morano (tanpura).