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The Tabla Series - Rimpa Siva . |
Rimpa Siva- Tabla
Sanatan Goswami - Harmonium
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Rimpa Siva
Few Indian musicians have created as much excitement and discussion in recent times as Rimpa Siva. Those who have been fortunate enough to witness her live performances have been stunned by her virtuosity and her awareness of the traditions that feed into the modern repertoire of tabla playing. Her story is remarkable by any stretch of the imagination. At the age of fourteen she had already accompanied many of the contemporary celebrities of Indian Classical music including Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty in sell out tours of the USA and Europe. The breathe-taking power, precision and speed exhibited in her solo tabla playing has challenged many preconceptions about the role of women in the world of tabla playing.
Throughout her short career her guide and inspiration has been her father Prof. Swapan Siva, an eminent teacher of the Farukhabad gharana. As a young child she would look on studiously while her father gave tabla lessons to his male disciples. Since girls are hardly ever initiated into learning the tabla, Rimpa’s father didn’t concern himself about it too much at first. Rimpa however was mesmerized by the sounds of the drums and started dabbling with it from the age of three. It was when she was about nine that her father noticed Rimpa had mastered certain aspects of the instrument which people usually get to only around 16-17 years of age and realized he had real talent on his hands.
Rimpa’s solo tabla performances have taken her to all corners of her native India and beyond. Travelling to Norway in 1996, at the age of ten, she was awarded the Arun Land Rej Memorial Fund for her performance, which included a cash award of fifty thousand rupees. In June 1997, she was invited to the Netherlands to participate in the World Child Festival. In 1998 a documentary film titled ‘Rimpa Siva: Princess of Tabla’ was made in France to honour this child prodigy. Rimpa's music was given a tinge of fusion by Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia at the New Millennium year programme for Indian National TV.
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 recognized 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 include Peshkar, Qayida 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 over many generations and are therefore highly prized by tabla players.
Farukhabad Gharana
This gharana is said to have been founded by Haji Vilayat Khan, a tabla player from the Bareilly/Farukhabad region. He successfully blended the regional style of his ancestors with material from the already established Lucknow school, received as dowry in his marriage to the daughter of Ustad Miyan Bakshu of that gharana.
The Farukhabad style of playing flourished through its association with the Royal Court of Rampur between the mid-nineteenth century up to the independence of India in 1949. After this the courts were abolished and therefore lost their ability to give patronage to the arts. Among the famous disciples who performed at Rampur was Ahmedjan Thirakawa, an iconic figure in the tabla community. After the decline of Rampur most Farukhabad players migrated to Calcutta, which soon became the seat of this tradition. It was in Calcutta that the khalifa (family successor) of the gharana Ustad Keramatullah Khan taught and performed until his untimely death in 1977.
Teentaal (Vilambit/Madhya lay) - Tracks 1-8
1) Uthan/Peshkar: 2) Qayida: 3) Gat Tukra: 4) Rela: 5) Gat Rela: 6) Gat Qayida: 7) Gat: 8) Rela Qayida.
Throughout the solo, the tempo of the sixteen beat cycle is regulated by Harmonium, which plays a repeated lilting melody line known as lehara (or nagma). The word "lehara" is a derivative of the word ‘lahar’, meaning current of a river or a stream. The lehara also helps in highlighting the most emphatic beat in the cycle known as ‘sam’ (literally "equal" or "together"), which occupies the first beat of a taal. Vilambit, Madhya and Drut refers to the tempo, representing Slow, Medium and Fast speed.
The traditional starting point for a tabla solo recital is Peshkar, an introductory improvisatory form beginning in a slow tempo, concentrating initially on a few select tabla syllables such as na/ta, ge, dha, dhin and tin. Peshkar gradually expands and unfolds introducing the listener to a wider range of phrases and sounds, playing a similar role in tabla solo to that of ‘alap’ in Indian vocal music, where the soloist progressively acclimatizes to the music and the environment in which he or she is performing. The Peshkar here is preceeded by Uthan, a short emphatic improvised composition lasting one complete cycle of sixteen beats. Uthan concludes with a tehai, a phrase repeated three times used to conclude the sequence.
Qayida (track 2) is the main focus of the solo. It is considered has the most important form because of its great potential for elaboration. It is a composed theme followed by a sequence of improvised variations known as palta played according to set rules. The Qayida has been elaborated on in detail and ends with a tehai. Gat (track 3, 7) is a very advanced level composition in the art of tabla playing. It can include elements of Peshkar, Qayida, Rela and Tukra or Chakradar all in one composition with sudden changes in sound dynamics. It requires a lot of technical virtuosity and dexterity in the hands of a player to execute these compositions skilfully. The word Rela (track 4) is said to have derived from ‘rail gadi’, which means train. But technically it means a drum roll like effect produced by continuous repetition of one sound syllable. Composite forms such as Gat Tukra (track 3) and Gat Qayida incorporate characteristics from both named composition types.
Teentaal (Drut Lay) - Tracks 9 to 18
9) Lehara introduction 10) Tukra 11) Chakradar 12) Rela 13) Gat Tukra 14) Chakradar 15) Tukra 16) Chakradar 17) Laggi 18) Improvisation
This part of the solo features mainly pre-composed forms such as tukra and chakradar. Many of the compositions are recited or sung before playing in the tradition of Pardhant. Tukra (lit. ‘piece’) is a short composition played in faster tempo usually featuring a variety of tabla syllables and always ending with a tehai. Chakradar (from charka, meaning- wheel, circle, cycle) is a fixed composition which is essentially a tukra played three times in order to reach the first beat of the cycle (sam) with the final tehai stroke. Laggi is a groove based form often associated with tabla accompaniment of lighter romantic classical forms such as thumri. Laggi playfully displaces rhythm to other parts of the beat, creating variations in accents and stresses.
Jhaptaal – Tracks 19-26
19) Lehara introduction 20) Uthan 21) Peshkar/Qayida 22) Qayida 23) Rela Qayida 24) Bedam Chakradar 25) Tukra 26) Chakradar/ Tehai.
Jhaptaal is a ten beat rhythmic cycle. Each taal has associated with it a pattern of bols, known as ‘theka’, which are known to all Indian classical musicians and which serve to outline the structure of the taal. For example, the theka for jhaptaal is as follows.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
dhi na / dhi dhi na / ti na / dhi dhi na.
Furthermore the taal is divided into 2.3.2.3. The taal is again enhanced by the lehara this time played in Raga Jog on the Harmonium.
The soloist always returns to the theka after playing the various compositions. In this solo Rimpa has maintained the traditional structure of first playing ‘theme and variation’ compositions, followed by fixed, pre-composed types such as tukra and chakradar.
John Ball
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