India, March 21 -- When Rishab Rikhiram Sharma released the music video for Bijli, a track from his album Navaras, last year, he knew the song would go viral. It's based on Raga Kirwani, and is as thunderous as the name suggests. What the 26-year-old musician didn't expect is to be almost upstaged by his own instrument. It sounded like the sitar, but where the traditional instrument has a heavy, bulbous base, Sharma's contraption was flat and light, almost like a guitar. He was strumming it like a guitar too, standing up. The world was curious.

Sharma is the son of national-award-winning instrument maker Sanjay Rikhiram. The family runs music stores in Delhi and the US. They know that sitars are frightfully expensive - even a zitar, an e...