Tabla solos: one hour long tasting the vast variety of rhythms at the tabla, the well-known percussion instrument from the North Indian raga music.
The selected, beautiful recordings are not from a CD or LP, but from audio of video recordings on YouTube. In most cases, the place of recording and recording date are not mentioned. Anyhow, who cares about faulty documentation with such beautiful recordings?
The tabla consists of two separate drums, the dayan and the bayan. The dayan produces the higher tones, the bayan the bass tones. The dayan is almost always played with the right hand and the bayan with the left hand, yet occcasionally it occurs the other way around.
The tabla plays the main role as a lead instrument of a vocalist or instrumentalis in a regular raga concert, but it is also played solo at a raga stage. The tabla solo is usually played in a cyclus of 16 beats and lets the listener take notice of the skills, the repertoire and the playing style of the tabla player.
In this episode, eight famous players who let their hands speak on the tabla. You will be hearing solos from: Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, Anindo Chatterjee, Satyajit Talwalkar, Sanju Sahai, Yogesh Samsi, Subhankar Banerjee, Swapan Chaudhuri and Zakir Hussain.
During the introductory illumination:
Tabla solo by Swapan Chaudhuri, recorded probably in 2013
Then successively:
Tabla solo by Ahmedjan Thirakwa, recorded around 1936
Tabla solo by Anindo Chatterjee, recorded around 2011
Tabla solo by Satyajit Talwalkar, at the Tilak Smarak in Pune, recorded in 2008
Tabla solo by Sanju Sahai, recorded in 2012
Tabla solo by Subhankar Banerjee and Yogesh Samsi, recorded probably in 2014
Tabla solo by Swapan Chaudhuri, recorded probably in 2013
Tabla solo by Zakir Hussain, recordings from late seventies.
