How has your journey been growing up as brothers in a family where music was an important part of your tradition as your father Sadruddin Merchant was also a music composer?
Salim: When growing up together, there was always music around us even while we were playing or doing anything else. Our father was a music composer before he became a manufacturer of musical instruments. So, in our childhood days, we had musical instruments around us as toys. At the age of like five and eight, we were introduced to quality music and we both studied Indian classical and Western classical music, so were extremely fortunate to blend in both the worlds. I studied classical piano at the Trinity College of Music in London; Sulaiman learnt drums before being tutored by Ustad Allah Rakha, Taufiq Qureshi and Ustad Zakir Hussain. Since our passion turned into our profession, we have enjoyed every bit of our nonstop musical journey. It's been over two decades and over 100 hit songs, but it still feels like we have just begun.
Who was your idol in your growing up days?
Ustad Zakir Hussain.
This story is from the February 2020 edition of RITZ.
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This story is from the February 2020 edition of RITZ.
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