I am 78 yrs old,Indian,mechanical/electrical engineer by training ,a die and tool engineer/entrepreneur by profession.
Trained under Pandit Lalji Gokhale (a senior desciple of Ustad thirakwa) and later with Ustad Amir Hussein .
acoompanied Shobha Gurtu,Kishori Amonkar, Pandit Jasraj and many other senior artists from Maharashtra.Presently practicing under the guidance of pandit Bapu Patwardhan,again a desciple of Ustad Thirakwa.
I am alittle disturbed with the present trend in national and international approach towards trditional tabla playing.
Through this blog I wish to present my thoughts which may radically defer from many other renowned practicing percussionists in the field.
I will briefly state my view point and over a long period elaborate and convey some useful information,compositions, secrets on NIKAAS which may be of help to some students learning this art.
The origin of the word TABLA is not very clear. The original gharana namely DELHI was started sometime in the 15th century.Tabla was mainly used as a supportive instrument to a vocal singer or to players of stringed instruments. Simultaneously, the families specialising in this art composed some delightful compositions for their own pleasure and also for practice or RIYAAZ.Competing families,I imagine must have indulged in displaying their compositions with some pride,but never offered them freely to any member of other family.. It was very common to offer as dowry (DAHEJ),composigions of one family to other family at the time of inter family marriages.In the 19th and 20th century some performers started displaying their art in a chamber concert form. Munir khan,habibuddin khan,Thirakwa,Amir Hussein, Shaikh Dawood, Karamatulla Khan,Anokhilal,Chaturlal,Kishen Maharaj, Allah Rakha and many others presented their art in the form of Tabla SOLO ( different from an accompanist).
Initially,the performers received patronage from Royal Families which were holding small kingdoms under the british, The royalties of lucknow,patiyala,Rampur,gwalior,Baroda,Kolhapur and many others were known to be patrons of these artists ( and also artists amongst singers and instrumentalists-I will however limit my comments to the tabla players). They were well looked after with housing,food, salary etc. They were expected to entertain the Royalty,their friends and their citizens. They were also expected to teach promising young students mostly men.
After Indian independence in 1947, the Royalties were integrated with india and their capacity to support artists,sportsmen etc was non existant. Thus these artists were released from the patronage of Royalties and Indian common citizens started patronising them through music circles, annual conferences. etc. In my times, Sur singar parishad in Bombay, Tansen samaroh in gwalior,sawai gandharva festival in Pune, and some major conferences in Jullunder and Calcutta were and are very popular.
To be continued.
Suresh Mulgaonkar
