Album Notes

Akram Khan Akram Khan is the foremost exponent of the Ajrara gharana of tabla playing in India today. His training started from early childhood at the hands of his great grand father Ustad Mohamed Shafi Khan who introduced him first to the initial techniques and concepts of tabla. He then went on to study more intensively with Ustad Niazu Khan who was able to groom young Akram in the subtleties of tabla playing. His father, tabla player Ustad Hasmat Ali Khan has been an inspiration thoughout his career. In recent times, Akram Khan has become one of the most popular accompanists having shared the stage with many of the great musicians of India including Ustad Vilayat Khan. His playing is noted for the beauty and balance of his sound and the marvellously subtle and sophisticated used of the bayan or bass drum. Tabla The Tabla is the most popular and widely used drum of North India. Its colourful range of tonal qualities combined with its capacity to express remarkable rhythmic permutations make it a unique percussion instrument which in recent times has inspired and fascinated audiences worldwide. The pair of drums consist of a high-pitched, precisely tuned dahina (also called dayan or tabla), and a low-pitched, less precisely tuned drum, the bayan. The dahina is responsible for many of the resonant ringing sounds (or bols).The bayan provides the bass and is recognizable for its swooping bass sound, which provides colourful embellishment. It is said that the heart and soul of the tabla is expressed through the Bayan. Most frequently the tabla is used to accompany classical instrumental, vocal and dance performances, but as all tabla players will remind you, there also exists a strong tradition of tabla solo playing. The history of tabla is shrouded in mystery and mythology; however it is most commonly thought to have developed in the area of Delhi in the mid-eighteenth century. Initially, much of the inspiration for its repertoire was borrowed and adapted from other Indian drums including pakhawaj and dholak. However, over the period since then, tabla players have built up a huge repertoire of material specific to the dynamics of the tabla. This vast range of compositions has been made richer by the evolution of a number of distinct regional performance styles, known as gharanas, of which there are six recognised by the tabla community, namely, Delhi, Ajrara, Farukhabad, Lucknow, Benares and Punjab. These styles have played a major role in the development of tabla playing with regard to technique and repertoire, The tabla player uses a vocabulary of semi-onomatopoeic syllables to represent the strokes on the instrument known as 'bols' (from the Hindi verb bolna, 'to speak'), a system which has been used to communicate compositions through the ages. Bols making up popular phrases such as 'dhati dhage tina gina' and 'dhati dhatere ketetake terekete', are recited by the player before playing, in a practice known as Pardhant, a kind of Indian version of rap. While in training a student is typically taught to speak the bols of the composition before actually playing it on the drums. The solo tabla repertoire consists of a great variety of compositional forms, many of which are featured on this recording. The forms can be divided into two broad categories. Firstly, compositions of the 'theme and variation' type are Peshkar, Qaida and Rela where a rhythmic theme is expanded and permutated using a variety of improvisatory techniques. Usually featured in the first half of the solo, these themes are pre-composed, but designed in a way to allow maximum potential for improvisation, testing the performer's creativity to the limit. The latter part of the recital most commonly consists of fixed compositions such as Tukra, Gat and Chakradar, many of which have been inherited from great masters from generation to generation and are therefore highly prized by tabla players. Ajrara Gharana The Ajrara style of tabla playing i