Thanks for this article,
@Analogous. Your posts are a class in themselves.
I had a hunch it must be by Aneesh Pradhan as I was reading through and was confirmed at the end. He is one of the major scholars on Classical music today, besides being such a fine Tabla player himself.
It’s so true, the contribution and value of the accompanists is so indispensable in a Hindustani classical concert. Usually they fall in two categories - the melody (sur) accompanists (on sarangi, harmonium, or rarely violin) and the rhythm (taal) accompanist (on tabla or pakhawaj). The latter are generally bigger in stature than the former, though there have been notable exceptions to that like Tulsidas Borkar, the inimitable harmonium accompanist to Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva and Mallikarjun Mansur among others.
Over the decades, we have therefore, seen famous main musician-tabla accompanist pairs - whether Ravi Shankar-Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar - Chatur Lal, Ali Akbar Khan - Mahapurush Mishra, Hariprasad-Zakir, Shivkumar-Zakir, Kishori Amonkar-Balkrishna Iyer, Ulhas Kashalkar-Suresh Talwalkar, each one of them created magic together today available to us in the form of recordings. Here I must particularly appreciate Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, who are the only two musicians I remember, who showed the rare gesture of granting solo tracks to their tabla accompanists in their albums.
Of course there were tabla players who were great soloists themselves, such as Kishen Maharaj, Shankar Ghosh, Samta Prasad, Tari Khan and Kumar Bose who were highly sought after as accompanists by the leading vocal/instrumental musicians of their times. Even today, Anindo Chatterjee, Bickram Ghosh, Swapan Chaudhuri, Nayan Ghosh and Aneesh Pradhan himself, fall into this category. Some others like Yogesh Shamsi, Sanju Sahai, Talvin Singh are among the best Tabla accompanists of the day.
Anyone who has heard a classical concert would know the tabla (or pakhawaj) accompanist’s inseparable contribution in the success of the performance. They not only provide the rhythmic foundation, and set the pace, but also adorn the concert with their virtuosity. But most importantly, it is their chemistry with the main performer that is the key to great concerts and witnessing it unfolding is a tremendous source of joy for the listeners. Aneesh has dwelt upon the nuances of this in this article, but there’s a lot more, perhaps in a more elaborate book/treatise by him.
And then you have some freaks of nature such as Zakir who break the moulds of tabla accompanying and can enter into a jugalbandi with the main player. Their tabla, then ceases to be mere percussion and starts singing itself. But that’s another story!
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