If ever an instrument were identified with a single musician in the public's imagination, it is the Indian Santur with Pandit Shivkumar Sharma: before this peerless artist began to perform classical music on the instrument in the 1950s, few Indians outside of Kashmir would have heard (or perhaps even heard of) the Santur. Even now he is the instrument's undisputed master and one of what remains a small group of classical virtuosi.

The Santur is a type of dulcimer or box zither, whose strings are struck with a pair of curved wooden sticks. Instruments of this type are found in many parts of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and China, although they were relatively little known in India before the 20th century. The Indian Santur is closely related to the Persian instrument of the same name, and was assimilated into Indian classical music via Kashmir, where it is the leading instrument of the 'Sufiana Kalam' ensemble: the agent of this adoption was of course non other than Pandit Shivkumar Sharma himself.