Sharan Rani has been played on NTS in shows including Raga Vibrations, featured first on 21 August 2017. Songs played include Raga Hemant, Raga Nat Bhairav and Raga Yaman Kalyan.

Legendary Sarod player Pandita Sharan Rani was a trailblazer in Hindustani classical music in every sense of the word. Credited for opening the doors of Hindustani instrumental music for women, she was not only the first woman to take up Sarod professionally but also the first woman instrumentalist in the country. Born on 9 April 1929 in Delhi, Sharan Rani hailed from a family of non-musicians who were businessmen and educationists. Considered to be amongst the greatest in Indian classical music in the mid-twentieth century, Sharan Rani’s life is a shining example of courage, defiance and perseverance. In Hindustani classical music, women had only been associated with vocal music as instrumental music was considered a male persevere. In her younger days, she learnt Kathak under Achhan Maharaj and Manipuri dance from Nabha Kumar Sinha side by side with Kapila Vatsayayan but was told clearly by her family that this should be restricted to home only. It was on a summer afternoon a young Sharan came across the ‘love of her life’. Her elder brother Brij Narayan had brought Sarod home. Out of curiosity, she tried to tune it and play it with a copper coin. The emanating music filled her heart with joy and this turned out to be a defining moment in her life. Sharan’s quest to master the instrument took her to Maihar, Madhya Pradesh where she learnt music from multi-instrumentalists and doyen of Maihar Gharana, Baba Allauddin Khan. This also meant she had to give up her luxurious urban life and lead a nearly ascetic life as mandated by her Guru. Sharan Rani was only the second woman to have learnt from Baba, the first being his own daughter, Vidushi Annapurna Devi herself. “I went to Baba (Ustad Allauddinh Khan) and told him that I wanted to learn everything from him. He asked me why did I choose a masculine instrument when I could have easily played the sitar or be a vocalist. However, I persisted and he took me to Maihar,” she says in the documentary Sharan Rani—The Divine Sarod Player.