Skip to main content

Tabla - An Indian classical instrument for Rythm

Tabla
Indian music has fascinated the West for many years. The tabla in particular has attracted the attention of a number of American and European percussionists. It has been used in popular music as early as the 60's and is heard in the popular media even today. However, many percussionists shy away from this instrument. The reasons for not "getting into it" are varied. Sometimes it is the lack of instruments; sometimes lack of teachers; sometimes it is the belief that tabla is just too difficult. These are legitimate concerns but they are not insurmountable obstacles. This article will address the concerns of a musician just wishing to get started in tabla. We will discuss the theory of Indian music, how to purchase tabla, the basic technique, and compositional theory. All of this information should make the job of getting started much easier. We should first familiarize ourselves with the extensive theory of Indian music. Indian music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world. It has its roots in theVedic chants of the first few millennia BC. Although the mechanics of the music have undergone tremendous changes in the last few thousand years, the essential characteristics of awe, respect and devotion have remained unchanged.

A strong remnant of the Vedic tradition is seen in the method of learning. One does not learn tabla from books but from a guru (teacher). The strong bond between teacher and disciple is considered essential for the continuation of the musical tradition. Indeed the tradition of teacher and disciple is considered to be at the very core of Indian classical music.

We use the expression "Indian music" rather loosely. In reality this consists of numerous different styles. There are two systems of classical music; one of Northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and another which is found in southern India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). There is also the popular medium of the film industry, which is comparable to American "Top 40". Finally there are innumerable folk traditions.

The tabla is found in all these traditions except for south Indian classical. Most people in the West think of tabla from the standpoint of the North Indian tradition. This is from exposure to great artists such as Zakir Hussain, Mahapurush Misra, Alla Rakha (Ravi Shankar's accompanist during the 60's) and a host of others. Although this is not the only genre to which tabla is important, it is a reasonable starting place. It is reasonable because this is the genre which created tabla, and provides the most systematic theoretical base for its performance practice. We will follow this viewpoint through the rest of this article.

The north Indian system is based upon two major concepts; "rag" and "tal". Rag may briefly be considered the melodic or modal aspect of the music while tal is the rhythmic. Both rag and tal occupy an equal and inseparable position in this system.

Tabla has a position in both rag and tal. When numerous tabla are tuned to the notes of the scale, entire melodies may be played. This is called "Tabla Tarang". However, the most important use of tabla is to provide the tal. It is in this capacity that most people think of the instrument.

The word "tal" literally means "clap". The clapping of hands may be the oldest form of rhythmic accompaniment. Today, a system of claps and waves forms a conceptual common ground. It is common to the way instrumentalists, dancers and vocalists think of rhythm.

There are similarities between Western and Indian rhythm. Western rhythm may function at the level of beats, measures or even longer cycles. The same is true of Indian rhythm. We may now look more closely at these different levels.

The most fundamental unit is the "matra". This translates to "beat". In many cases the matra is just a single stroke. However, just as sixteenth, or eighth-notes may be strung together to make a single beat, so too may several strokes of tabla be strung together to have the value of one matra.

The next higher level of structure is the "vibhag". This translates to "measure" or "bar". These measures may be as little as one beat or more than five; usually they are two, three, or four matras (beats) in length. These vibhags are described in terms of claps and waves. A vibhag, which is signified by a clap of the hands, is said to be "bhari" or "tali". Conversely, a vibhag which is signified by a waving of the hand, is said to be "khali".

Tabla Gharanas
Gharana may be thought of as a school, approach or dialect of tabla. Many years ago transportation and communication were not good in India. In this environment, different places developed their own regional variations in technique, bol, and overall philosophy. There are six acknowledged gharanas of tabla: Dilli (Delhi), Farukhabad, Benares, Lucknow, Ajrada, and Punjab. Most of the artists today trace their lineage to one or more of these established schools.

Ajarada Gharana

Founder and Provenance
The Ajrada Gharana is traced to Kallu and Miru in the beginning of the 19th century.

Genealogy
They were disciples of Sitab Khan (Delhi Gharana). This Gharana is an offshoot of the Delhi Gharana.

Genre
The distinctiveness of this Gharana is the use of complex Bols and Meend. Pakhawaj bols are rare. The stress is on Ad and Barabar laya. It specializes in the three-time pattern. The position of the left drum is not changed, but its face is touched with the thumb. Gheginak, gheghe, Dhadagena, Nadagena or Tadagena etc. are used in Qayadas.

The Peerless & Illustrious
Habibuddin Khan, Niazu Khan and Ramzan Khan (and ofcourse me :) are the main representatives.

I belong to Ajrada gharana. Click here to know more about Tabla and gharanas.

Naimish R. Dave

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

.NET Core: Session Wrapper Design Pattern For ASP.NET Core

Here, we'll learn about Session Wrapper design pattern to ease the access of Session. We'll make our access of session "Typed". Also, we may apply any validation or constraint in this wrapper class. Step 1 - Create a Session Manager class   In this example, we are going to store two items in Session (i.e. ID & LoginName). We are injecting IHttpContextAccessor so that we can access the Session variable.  We are creating properties which are actually accessing Session variable and returning the data or writing the data to Session. We have added one helping property "IsLoggedIn" which is using other properties to make a decision. We may have more such helping/wrapper properties. using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; public class SessionManager       {           private readonly ISession _session;           private const String ID_KEY = "_ID";           private const String LOGIN_KEY = "_LoginName";           publ
Post a Comment
Read more

Facade Design Pattern

Facade Intent Provide a unified interface to a set of interfaces in a subsystem. Facade defines a higher-level interface that makes the subsystem easier to use. Motivation Structuring a system into subsystems helps reduce complexity. A common design goal is to minimize the communication and dependencies between subsystems. One way to achieve this goal is to introduce a  facade  object that provides a single, simplified interface to the more general facilities of a subsystem. Consider for example a programming environment that gives applications access to its compiler subsystem. This subsystem contains classes such as Scanner, Parser, ProgramNode, BytecodeStream, and ProgramNodeBuilder that implement the compiler. Some specialized applications might need to access these classes directly. But most clients of a compiler generally don't care about details like parsing and code generation; they merely want to compile some code. For them, the powerful but low-level
Post a Comment
Read more

How to make a Method Thread Safe?

In multi-threaded applications where multiple threads make calls to the methods of a single object, it is necessary that those calls be synchronized. If code is not synchronized, then one thread might interrupt another thread and the object could be left in an invalid state. A class whose members are protected from such interruptions is called thread-safe. Although, there is no rule that makes the code thread safe, the only thing you can do is make sure that your code will work no matter how many times is it being actively executed, each thread can be interrupted at any point, with each thread being in its own state/location , and this for each function (static or otherwise) that is accessing common objects. If a method (instance or static) only references variables scoped within that method then it is thread safe because each thread has its own stack: In this instance, multiple threads could call ThreadSafeMethod concurrently without issue. public class Thing { publ
Post a Comment
Read more

Create VHD using DISKPART

Create Virtual Harddisk Using DISKPART Open the   Elevated Command Prompt   with Administrator Privileges and type the following commands: DISKPART CREATE VDISK FILE="c:\win7\win7.vhd" MAXIMUM=20000 SELECT VDISK FILE="c:\win7\win7.vhd" ATTACH VDISK CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY ASSIGN LETTER=X FORMAT QUICK LABEL=Windows7 EXIT This will create the  VHD  file of primary partition. You will see the newly attached disk in Disk Management with Drive Letter X: Attaching and Detaching VHD in  Windows 7 Right Click  on My Computer and Click ' Manage ' that will open up  Computer Management , in that click on  Disk Management . Just like previous part. Then Right Click on Disk Management and select  'Attach VHD'.  This will open new windows  'Attach Virtual Hard Disk ' Click on  OK  and that will attach the existing Virtual Hard Disk. Now, if you don't want to make write anything on the VHD, we
Post a Comment
Read more