New Delhi: Legend has it that a competition was held in a Mughal court between two pakhawaj players. The losing maestro was so enraged that he smashed his pakhawaj, a two-sided percussion instrument, into two. And so was born the tabla.
Such was the dramatic birth of the tabla, the two pieces of wood, metal and bound leather, which today are the primary percussion accompanying instruments of any Hindustani classical performance.
For ages, the tabla largely played second fiddle to the vocalist or the main instrumentalist — until the holy trinity of Pandit Samta Prasad, Pandit Kishan Maharaj and Ustad Alla Rakha Khan gave it prominence.
However, it was left to Alla Rakha’s son, Zakir Hussain, to put it on the global stage when he collaborated with Western performers such as John McLaughlin, Yo-Yo Ma and George Harrison of the Beatles.
Stories behind the origin of tabla
Much like the diverse sounds it produces, the stories behind the invention of the tabla are also numerous. The smashing of the pakhawaj by Sudhar Khan Dadhi in the court of Mohammed Shah Rangeela in the 18th century is just one legend.
“The origin of the Tabla is one of the most controversial aspects of Indian classical music and nothing can be said with any degree of certainty,” says musicologist Pandit Vijay Shanker Mishra in his book “Art and Science of Playing Tabla.”
“On regaining his calm, Sudhar Khan placed the two severed pieces of the Pakhawaj with their faces (drumheads) up, much like today’s Tabla and began playing on them. As the Pakhawaj could still produce sounds in spite of being sliced into two, the people exclaimed: ‘Tab bhi bola (It still speaks!)’ (which) turned into ‘Tabbola’ and finally, ‘Tabla,’ hold the proponents of this view,” according to Mishra’s book.
Many also credit the invention of the tabla to a drummer named Amir Khusrau Khan in the early 18th century, who was tasked with creating a more refined and melodic percussion instrument to accompany the emerging music style known as ‘Khayal.’
The barrel-shaped pakhawaj drum was considered the ancestor of both the tabla and the mridangam, and has been depicted in countless paintings and prints.
Although the tabla is a relatively recent addition to Hindustani classical music, the instrument has gained immense popularity, and today it is impossible to imagine a concert without the tabla, whether as a solo instrument or an accompaniment.
There is a more scholarly view of the origins of the name — it is said to have been derived from the Arabic word “tabl”, meaning “drum.” The percussion instrument is made up of two drums, ‘daayaan’ or right, which produces bass sound, and ‘baayaan’ or left, which creates higher pitched treble.
While the daayaan is a narrower drum typically made of wood, the baayaan is the larger, rounded drum made of metal. Both the drums are played with the fingers and the palm of the hand.
Over the centuries, several distinct gharanas in classical Indian tabla have developed, including Ajrara, Benares, Delhi, Farrukhabad, Lucknow, and Punjab. While these gharanas still dominate the tabla tradition today, the late 20th century has seen their boundaries start to blur as modern exponents seek to build upon the foundation laid by their predecessors.
Tabla, a worldwide sensation
Many artists have taken the tabla worldwide, exploring its versatile fusion possibilities. Like, Punjab master Alla Rakha, who became renowned as Ravi Shankar’s principal accompanist during numerous global tours, and his son Zakir Hussain, widely considered as the tabla’s foremost contemporary ambassador.
But the fame and recognition for tabla players was not easy to come by, and as mentioned by Hussain in the book, “Zakir Hussain: A Life in Music”, contemporary tabla players have much to thank their seniors, Pandit Samta Prasad, Pandit Kishan Maharaj, Alla Rakha Khan, for their groundbreaking contribution to music.
“As a tabla player we didn’t make much money. Now it’s different; we tabla players are not taken for granted. In the early days when we were going to play outside Bombay, we tabla players were asked to travel by train whilst the main artists would travel by air. That changed in my father’s time and now all musicians travel together,” wrote Zakir Hussain in the book by Nasreen Munni Kabir.
“It took about 20 years to get to a point where I could ask for something, tell the organisers that I needed this or that — say I wanted a good hotel room or wanted to travel by air,” he said in the book.
