Bhajan Sopori
Santoor Maestro & Padma Shri Winner (1948–2022)
Pandit Bhajan Sopori (22 June 1948 – 2 June 2022) was an Indian instrumentalist, musicologist, composer, and teacher. He was a player of the santoor, an ancient stringed musical instrument.
Early life and family
Sopori was born in Srinagar into a Kashmiri Pandit family to Shambhu Nath Sopori on 22 June 1948. Sopori hailed from Sopore in the Baramulla district of the Kashmir Valley and traced his lineage to ancient Santoor experts. He belonged to the Sufiana gharana of Indian classical music. His family has played santoor for over six generations.
His first public performance was at a conference organised by Prayag Sangeet Samiti & the University of Allahabad when he was 10 years old.
Career
Sopori gave his first public performance in 1953, at the age of five. He learned western classical music from Washington University in St. Louis & Hindustani from his grandfather S.C. Sopori and father Shambhoo Nath.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2900634. VIAF identifies the subject as 48891048. The Library of Congress control number is no2002016788. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2022 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bhajan Sopori” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.