Instruments

Tabla

The tabla is the preeminent drum of northern India, heard in a large variety of classical, popular, and religious genres, including the ecstatic qawwali music of the mystical Islamic Sufi sect. It consists of a pair of non-identical drums, one of them (the treble drum, also called the tabla) shaped like a squat barrel, and the other (the bass drum, or baya) hemispherical. The skin membranes are intricately laced to the drum bodies with leather thongs, and then treated with a special paste (containing glue and soot, among other things) in certain areas. The result is a tuned drum capable of perhaps the greatest melodic variety found among the hand percussion instruments of the world. The tabla's intricate tonal patterns have inspired the creation of vocal mnemonic (memorization) patterns that themselves have attained high levels of complexity and virtuosity. These drum-melody vocals may be heard on recordings by John McLaughlin, Sheila Chandra, and other Indian-influenced Western artists.