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Genealogical musings: a brief discussion of the Delhi tabla gharana | ||
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James Kippen, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada | ||
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Delhi has been a locus for tabla playing since the early to mid-eighteenth century. Many people argue it was "invented" there, and that its inventor's lineage is the oldest continuous tabla tradition. This is a brief outline of the Delhi lineage, including genealogical information and a little historical analysis/commentary. The information comes largely from the gharana's khalifa, or head, the late Ustad Inam Ali Khan and his uncle, Ustad Munnu Khan. It was collected during the early 1980s, and recorded interviews with these gharana members took place in Delhi in April 1984. I hope to add further information about the repertoire as time goes on. Caveat: I do not wish to get into a debate with my friend Daniel Neuman (The Life of Music in North India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1980) about the validity of the term "gharana" for tabla lineages. He and others know my views, and I am using the term here as those Delhi informants used it when speaking directly with me in the Urdu language. I am aware that the term came into existence only around the end of the nineteenth century, that it was used primarily by "soloists" (using Neuman’s term), and that “accompanists” like tabla players probably began using the term to validate their knowledge, raise their music to the status of an art, and to elevate their own social status. As with all genealogies, the one I give here is incomplete and probably somewhat selective. In anthropology we call this kind of selectivity "structural amnesia". I take the view that history is a reconstruction of the past that justifies the present. Notwithstanding, my primary source was the genealogy I saw written in Urdu. I read and speak Urdu, and I have therefore been able to verify what Delhi gharana members believe to be true. Whether the document reflects this knowledge, or the knowledge has been crystallized because this version of the family tree exists on paper, is worthy of a future debate.
No documentary evidence yet exists for the "invention" of tabla. Many scholars have tried to show either that (1) tabla existed over 2,000 years ago (temple carvings seem to indicate horizontally played drums, but alas with no organological similarity), or that (2) tabla resulted from the chopping in half of a pakhavaj. The pakhavaj theory has some credibility because of the similarity of the smaller head of that drum to the right head of the tabla pair (dahina, dayan, or simply tabla). As the excellent study of tabla by Rebecca Stewart has suggested (The Tabla in Perspective. Unpublished thesis, UCLA, 1974), tabla was most likely a hybrid drum set resulting from experiments with and adaptations of existing drums such as pakhavaj, dholak, and naqqara. The origins of tabla repertoire and technique may be found in all three, and in physical structure and playing technique there are also elements of all three: for example, the smaller pakhavaj head for the dahina, the naqqara kettledrum for the bayan, and the flexible use of the bass of the dholak. Tabla first appears in writings and in miniatures from the 1740s on. We therefore assume tabla to have first appeared sometime in the early eighteenth century. The first tabla players were undoubtedly also experts on other drums. Socially these early tabla musicians were mainly from the Dhari community (Mirasi "caste"). Some were Sunni Muslims, but a large and significant group belonged to (or at some stage had opted to convert from Hinduism to) the Shia Muslim sect. One of these Shias was Sudhar Khan Dhari. Sudhar Khan is the earliest tabla player we know of through genealogical record, and many believe he was responsible for creating this instrument. Sudhar Khan is the forefather to whom members of the Delhi tabla lineage trace their ancestry. It seems natural, therefore, that Sudhar Khan would be attributed with the tabla’s invention by default.
Genealogy It is not easy to visualize a family tree from a linear description such as the one I provide below. There is a graphic representation on page 68 my book, The Tabla of Lucknow, Cambridge University Press, 1988. However, it can be quite useful and instructive if readers map out the relationships for themselves on a sheet of paper. Sudhar Khan Dhari had two sons: Chote Khan and Husain Khan. Let us deal with the younger son first, Husain Khan. On the Delhi genealogical chart I saw noted that Husain Khan had four sons, only one of whom was named: Chajju Khan. Both Delhi and Lucknow lore tell of two brothers from Delhi leaving to seek patronage in Lucknow. One of these brothers might well have been the founder of the Lucknow tabla gharana, Miyan Bakhshu Khan Dhari. There is a professed clan linkage between Delhi and Lucknow, and they are both Shia. However, somewhat confusingly, Lucknow lore tells of Bakhshu Khan arriving in Lucknow from Qasur in the Panjab (now in Pakistan, just south of Lahore). Chote Khan had three sons: Bugara Khan, Chand Khan, and Lalle Masit Khan. Bugara Khan had two sons: Shitab Ali Khan and Gulab Ali Khan. Chand Khan had no sons. Lalle Masit Khan had one son, Nanne Khan, who in turn had no sons. Shitab Ali Khan had two sons: Muhammad Khan and Nazar Ali Khan. Gulab Ali Khan had no sons. Muhammad Khan had one son: Chote Khan. Nazar Ali Khan had no sons. Chote Khan had two sons: Gamay Khan (1883-1958) and Munnu Khan (?1900-90?), who was one of my informants. Gamay Khan had one son: Inam Ali Khan (1924-90), who was my other informant. Inam Ali has several sons, but the only one who plays tabla is Ghulam Haider Khan (though reports suggest he is not particularly accomplished). There is another twist in the genealogy. Remember Bugara Khan had two sons? He also had a daughter (her name not recorded) who was married to one Makkhu Khan. Makkhu Khan had a son, Bare Kale Khan. Bare Kale Khan had a son, Wali Bakhsh Khan (? some uncertainty about the name). Wali Bakhsh Khan had a son, Natthu Khan. Natthu Khan (1875-1940) was one of the great players of his age. Wali Bakhsh Khan also had a daughter who married Gamay Khan. Now perhaps you see what I mean about structural amnesia. Everything in this lineage explains the evolution of Ustad Inam Ali Khan and his links to the two Delhi greats of recent times: Gamay Khan and Natthu Khan. Whether all these other ancestors actually had no sons is debatable. Also, women do not figure in the genealogical tree unless they justify the existence of certain male figures. Many of these female links could indeed be important, specially since there is in Indian Muslim society a pattern of endogamous (i.e. within the clan) marriage. Nevertheless, there is likely to be a high degree of accuracy in the names and relationships that are mentioned, even if it is selective. And as for dates, no one is very clear about this but it seems reasonable to suggest that Sudhar Khan Dhari was born in the early 1700s. By adding 30 years (as an average) for each generation thereafter one obtains a reasonable diachronic mapping of generations to the present day. There has been no mention so far of Latif Ahmed Khan (1941-90), arguably one of the greatest tabla players of the 20th century, though in later years he suffered greatly from alcohol abuse and died an untimely death. A Sunni Muslim, he was a disciple of both Gamay Khan and Inam Ali, though relationships with Inam Ali soured in later years. My assessment is that this tabla tradition died with Inam Ali and Latif Ahmed. They in turn left a number of disciples in India and Europe, but none that I know of has the range of knowledge or the technique to project that knowledge as a living performance tradition into the future. James Kippen, Toronto, 1997 (updated 2003)
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