THE SONG OF THE SOUL

WHEN WE GREW UP, WE NEVER HAD TOYS, WE HAD MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AS OUR TOYS AND THAT WAS A GREAT START FOR US. WE WERE JUST BORN IN THE WORLD OF MUSIC

- SAMREEN KHOJA

Hitting their high notes together, the merchants of music Salim-Sulaiman talk about timeless music, cementing a legacy and creating independent music that will benefit aspiring musicians for years to come

THE 30-YEAR LONG CAREER OF BROTHERS SALIM AND Sulaiman Merchant has been built on passion, perseverance and determination, and that was evident on the day of our shoot, because as soon as Salim entered the studio where we were shooting and saw a piano, he couldn’t resist and immediately sat down to play a tune. A minute or so into it, he looks at me and exclaims “yeh toh out of tune hain.”

The brothers grew up in a family where music was tradition. “It has been quite a journey,” they tell me. “Our father was a composer and a multi-instrumentalist. He worked in the south Indian film industry. After that he come to Mumbai and did three movies which did not do well at the box office, so he started manufacturing musical instruments, but, he also on the side was composing music. So, when we grew up, we never had toys, we had musical instruments as our toys and that was a great start for us. We were just born in the world of music starting at the age of 6. I mastered the piano at the Trinity College of Music in London and Sulaiman took up tabla training with legends such as Taufiq Qureshi and Ustad Zakir Hussain. We started producing music in 1992,” said Salim.