MUSIC SPECIAL..State of Tabla

State of Tabla

 How in-house gurus, visiting maestros and generations of enthusiastic pupils made Kolkata the tabla capital of the world

 

So, will that be three times ghene?” asks Tamaghna, looking up from his notebook. “Read the bol aloud and figure it out for yourself,” replies his guru. Tamaghna obeys. His gurubhai Shubharun joins in. Over the next half an hour, they recite and play the bol till they get a nod of moderate approval from Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, tabla maestro to the world, but a concerned guru on a rocking chair this Sunday morning. The two disciples are in middle school. Their parents wait on sofas, closely following the lesson; this will help them supervise the riyaz at home. Like hundreds of other schoolboys in Kolkata (and their parents), their Sunday mornings are reserved for “tabla class”. Karate gives modest competition, but the tabla is by far the most popular cultural pursuit for Bengali boys.

What is it about Bengali parents, you may ask, that they push their boys towards the tabla? It is impossible to find an empirical answer. “Bengalis are a merry lot. The tabla, I think, ties in well with their general exuberance,” says tabla maestro Pandit Kumar Bose, without the slightest irony. Both Chatterjee and Bose feel that children take to the tabla more enthusiastically because the sense of rhythm appeals to them. A conversation with Papiya Das, a parent waiting in Chatterjee’s class, confirms this. She has never learnt music, nor has her husband. If it was a question of orienting their five-year-old son to classical music, they could have chosen any instrument. “The first time he saw a tabla, he just went crazy hitting it. And he was obviously enjoying whatever beat he was trying to play. So, we thought, maybe he will find interest in this more easily,” she says.

Bengal has produced some of the greatest tabla players in history — more than any other state. Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh was responsible for this. He invited three great maestros of his time — Ustad Maseedullah Khan (popularly referred to as Ustad Maseet Khan), Ustad Azeem Baksh Khan and Ustad Feroze Khan — to live in Kolkata in the mid 20th century, so that he could learn from them. Ghosh combined the training he received from the three to develop an individual style that combined the cerebral and the aesthetic. Significantly, he chose to dedicate his life to his disciples rather than focus on performing. Three generations of tabla players have learnt directly under him. A staggering number of them have dominated the world stage. Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, Pandit Kanai Dutt, Pandit Shyamal Bose, Pandit Shankar Ghosh, Pandit Sanjay Mukherjee, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee: the story of the tabla in the 20th century, when it moved into the global soundscape from being an accompanying instrument, would have been different without these names.

When Ghosh was at his peak, Ustad Karamatullah Khan, son of Ghosh’s guru Maseet Khan, also lived in Kolkata. One of the greatest tabla players of all time, his style of playing, though rooted in the Farukhabad Gharana (to which Ghosh principally subscribed), was different from Ghosh’s. One of Ghosh’s senior disciples says, on the condition of anonymity, “Many of us (Ghosh’s disciples) copied Karamat Khansahib’s style shamelessly. Once I was listening to a radio programme with guruji. Suddenly he asked me if Karamat Khansahib was accompanying the artiste on the tabla. I hesitated for a moment and then sheepishly told him that I was on the tabla.” Ghosh and Karamatullah shaped a new sensibility of tabla playing in Kolkata. It was predominantly in the Farukhabad mode, but Ghosh gathered compositions from other gharanas, Delhi, Ajrara, Punjab, Lucknow, and generously passed these to his students.

Farukhabad always had a strong presence in Kolkata, Ustad Sabir Khan, son of Karamatullah Khan, still lives there, but other tabla gharanas also flowered in Kolkata: Lucknow through Hiru Ganguly and Santosh Krishna Biswas, Benaras through Krishna Kumar Ganguly and Biswanath Bose, Delhi through Keshab Chandra Banerjee. Biswas’ disciple Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and Bose’s son and disciple Pandit Kumar Bose are the most prominent stars of the Lucknow and Benaras gharanas respectively, apart from being two of the finest tabla players in the world today. Both have spent their formative years in Kolkata.

Apart from in-residence gurus, Kolkata also gained from a regular stream of visiting tabla maestros. Many say that Dharwad, in northern Karnataka, emerged as a great centre of vocal music because of the musicians who passed through the town. Kolkata was no pit stop, but maestros who came to perform there often stayed for long periods, inspired by the enthusiasm of the listeners (and, no doubt, fine hospitality). This included tabla players. Greats like Ustad Ahmedjan Thirakwa, Ustad Habibuddin Khan, Pandit Anokhelal Mishra and Pandit Shamta Prasad spent substantial time in the city. All of them once even participated in a nightlong tabla festival organised by Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh.

Kolkata was not just a centre of Hindustani music. The other forms practiced here, Rabindrasangeet, Nazrulgeeti, film music, adhunik (modern) songs, also relied heavily on the tabla. Today, even when most of these forms are performed and recorded with keyboards, guitars and octapads, the tabla has not been replaced. This gives students of tabla an option to move out of classical music and yet practice their craft. Importantly, these opportunities ensure them a living. It may be difficult for a sarod or a sitar player to find success entirely outside Hindustani music, but a tabla player can have nothing to do with classical and remain busy. Radhakanta Nandi was a popular figure, but he played mainly with film and adhunik songs. Today, Biplab Mondal and Siddhartha Bhattacharya play almost exclusively with Rabindrasangeet and are probably busier than many of their counterparts.

So, is there an unofficial Kolkata gharana of the tabla? Most Kolkata-based tabla players would say yes, so we ask Pandit Nayan Ghosh, acclaimed tabla maestro and son and disciple of Pandit Nikhil Ghosh. Though he is a thoroughbred Mumbai-ite, Calcuttans have adopted him as their own. “You could say that because of the efforts of Gurudev Jnan Prakash Ghosh and Ustad Karamatullah Khan, specially because of their individual styles, the Kolkata tabla players developed a distinctive style of playing. So, yes, there is a Kolkata style, which is different from the basic North Indian styles of Delhi, Ajrada, Farukhabad and Lucknow. Also one must appreciate that most Kolkata tabla players have worked hard on speed and clarity. Maybe the younger virtuosos could work more wonders with careful thought given to prescribed techniques of different gharanas while executing compositions of those styles and masters,” he says.

Despite the word of caution, Ghosh finds reassurance in the fact that the number of tabla players from Kolkata is not dwindling. The generation after Anindo Chatterjee and Kumar Bose has produced Shubhankar Banerjee, who is on his way to becoming one of the finest of his generation. After Banerjee, there are the promising Sandeep Ghosh and Rupak Bhattacharjee (both disciples of Chatterjee).

It is not for nothing, then, that Tamaghna and Shubharun are sacrificing their Sunday mornings. As they repeat the same bol and exchange nervous glances to achieve better coordination, they inch closer to becoming part of a great tradition, albeit in their shorts and tee-shirts . n

Arunabha Deb is a Kolkata-based music writer IEEYE120805