During her active touring career from 1988 until 2015, Shubha Sankaran was the only woman actively performing the surbahar on the global concert circuit, and one of very few artists focusing exclusively on that instrument. She has performed with her husband, Khansahib Dr. Brian Q. Silver, throughout the United States, including at Lincoln Center in New York, and in concert and in radio and television broadcasts in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Great Britain, Rumania, Morocco, Egypt, Peru, Guatemala, and most recently, the Peoples Republic of China in 2007. She also toured with the Gundecha Brothers in Australia and Singapore in 2005, and the U.S. and Canada in 2006. She still teaches sitar, surbahar, and vocal music in the dhrupad style at her home in Washington, D.C.

Sankaran studied sitar with the late Ustad Imrat Khan, vocal music in the khayal style with the late Pandit Shrikant Bakre, the South Indian technique of tanam with the late Kalaimamani Ranganayaki Rajagopalan, and dhrupad with the late Pandit Ramakant Gundecha. In 1994, 2000, and 2006, she was recognized for her surbahar performance by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has released two CDs of her surbahar performance with accompaniment on the pakhawaj by Pandit Mohan Shyam Sharma: "Resurrecting a Raga” and “Seven Ragas in Seven Talas” (the second of which includes her vocal renditions in dhrupad style of all the compositions). Both albums have been released on the major streaming services—Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, etc.)

The surbahar is a large deep-voiced stringed instrument which might be said to be related to the sitar as the cello is to the violin. The surbahar is 60 inches long, with movable frets that allow a glissando, a sideways pull of the string across the same fret which raises the string’s pitch by up to six or seven notes. The wooden neck, made of cedrela tuna (common names tÅ«n or Indian mahogany) is attached to a flattened, tortoise-shaped gourd (larger than the more rounded gourd of the sitar) with a tÅ«n soundboard, and ebony bridges for both the seven main and twelve sympathetic strings. The deep, powerful voice of the surbahar makes it ideal for contemplative music.