Juno-nominated Anwar Khurshid shares healing power of music at MGH

A community hospital might seem like an odd venue for a world-renowned musician to play. But for Anwar Khurshid – a Juno-nominated sitarist whose music has been featured on the Oscar-nominated Life of Pi soundtrack – it is a perfect place to share the healing powers of music.

On Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 12 p.m. in the Michael Garron Hospital Mortimer Lobby, Anwar will bring his music and its restorative qualities to the hospital's World of Music concert series. Patients, visitors, physicians, staff, and the larger community are all welcome.

“[In Indian culture] there is a theory that inside every human being there are seven different chakras. What that means is that we are a being of light and there are these five centres in our body,” says Anwar. “Music touches each of those and has a healing effect.”

The sitar is an instrument used in traditional Indian music and popularized around the world by artists like Ravi Shankar and the Beatles. “It's a very beautiful instrument,” says Anwar. “It's very close to vocal music – you can play the nuances of vocal music on your sitar, which you can't do on many instruments.”

Anwar grew up in Quetta, Pakistan, where he excelled in mathematics and studied sitar. Later, after arriving in Canada with less than $200 in his pocket, he moved to Waterloo where he completed a degree in actuarial sciences. But the life of an actuary became a “gilded cage,” Anwar remembers, and he turned to music.

“There was a fire burning inside of me and a part of me has always known that I was a musician, that I was just doing other things,” Anwar says. “I should have just focused on music.”

The cultural diversity of Anwar's adopted home of Toronto has been an energizing influence on his music. Anwar counts among his collaborators blues phenom Paul Deslauriers, the Royal Conservatory's New Canadian Global Music Orchestra, classical guitarist Jesse Cook, and fusion band Sultans of String – creating an eclectic east-meets-west style that could only happen in Toronto.

All of that said, Anwar knows the limits of his music's powers. “The music I play does have healing qualities,” he says, “but if you get sick don't come to me – go to a doctor!”

For more information on Anwar's music, please visit sitarfusion.ca.