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Article Listing
Following is an article written by Jan Haag (an edited version
of this article was printed in a recent edition of the `India Currents'
magazine published from San Jose, CA). Reproduced with permission
from the author.
THE GOLDEN DRUMMING
OF
SWAPAN CHAUDHURI
by Jan Haag
Swapan Chaudhuri, one of the world's greatest
classical tabla players, celebrates his fiftieth birthday this
year. From India to America, England to Mexico, Canada to Nepal,
Australia to the United Arab Emirates, in France, Germany, Italy,
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia-wherever North India classical music
is played, he is in demand as a soloist and as an accompanist.
Over the last decade, he has given an average of 200 concerts a
year. Chaudhuri's touring schedule is the kind of which aspiring
musicians dream, but it is also a demanding, health-defying way
of life. During a typical week not long ago, Pandit (the Indian
title given to a distinguished and learned man) Chaudhuri taught
a dozen classes at the Ali Akbar College of Music on Monday, Tuesday
and Wednesday, then flew, on Thursday, to Los Angeles to teach,
from noon to seven, at the nearby California Institute of the Arts.
Friday, he gave a concert in West Virginia. Saturday, he did two
recording sessions in New York City. Then, on Sunday night, he
performed at a commemorative event at Lincoln Center to celebrate
Gandhi's 125th birthday, the guest list of which included, Dr.
Venkatraman, India's former President. "It's not the concerts that are difficult," he
says, "but the traveling, the constant traveling. And trying
new things. At times dangerous things," he laughs, his eyes
sparkling, then adds: "Tabla is limitless. I never want to
stop." In India, a number of years ago, he gave eight performances
in less than twenty-four hours. "They were all major concerts.
I started first with Pandit Ravi Shankar at 7:00 P.M. From there,
all over Calcutta, I played with Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ustad Amjad
Ali, Pandit Jasraj, then a solo, then two dance concerts with Pandit
Chitresh Das, then with Pandit Bhimsen Joshi..." his voice trails
off. "How can you even get around Calcutta that fast?" "At
night it is not so crowded." "Do you eat between concerts?" "Before
a concert I don't like to eat. I drink just tea. You don't need food,
the energy just comes. When you enjoy something, you forget about
yourself. Some kind of special power generates in your body, you
don't get tired."
In 1969, when Ali Akbar Khan
returned to Calcutta from an extended stay in America where he
had just created the American branch of the Ali Akbar College of
Music, he invited the twenty-four year old Swapan to his house
to play for him. "I played for
maybe half an hour. Khansahib was impressed. He decided that I should
play with him that year in concert at the Tansen Music Conference.
It was a very important concert, the first concert that Khansahib
gave after he returned from America. He took the risk." Swapanji
pauses, reflecting on the memory, repeating, "He took the risk.
For no one knew me at that time. But by then my love of tabla had
begun to develop. It was no longer just what my father told me to
do." The concert, with the already world-renowned Ali Akbar
Khan, was a great success. It was after that, when musicians began
to call the young tabla player asking him to play with them, that
Chaudhuri decided to become a professional musician. "My practice
changed and increased. To become a concert musician is very difficult.
In India, if you're not from a musician's family, it takes a very
long time to establish yourself. Slowly, over the next few years,
I began to be known. I sought out musicians. But I was often rejected.
I remember once sitting on the stage and a musician refused to play
with me." Swapanji pauses, "But maybe it was good for me,
I learned tenacity, I learned determination, I knew that one day
those same musicians who rejected me would come to ask me to play
with them. After a long time, I began to enjoy some success." During
those years, '69 to '81, Ali Akbar Khan invited him many times to
come to America, but Chaudhuri was determined to prove himself first
in India. "Even in '81 I didn't have the intention to leave
India, but the school needed a teacher and Khansahib asked me to
come. Also, my mother said, 'You should go this time. You should
accept.'" Swapanji hesitates for a long moment, then adds: "It
was her birthday. We were celebrating my mother's birthday. I had
played three concerts the night before, and had to play one more
at one o'clock. Then everybody came to our house, including Khansahib
and his family. My mother cooked for everybody. We had a nice time
and signed the contract. Then at night, just before 12 o'clock, my
mother passed away. She had a massive heart attack. It was her fifty-third
birthday, January 26th. There were seven or eight doctors in the
house, but they could do nothing."
At the Ali Akbar College of Music, which by then was permanently
housed in San Rafael, Ali Akbar Khan had a succession of great tabla
masters: Shankar Ghosh, Mahaparush Misra, Jnan Prakash Ghosh, Zakir
Hussain. And, occasionally, Khansahib, himself, or Alla Rakha, Zakir's
legendary father, would teach a tabla class. However, at the beginning
of 1981, the school needed a new tabla master. "But I could
not leave India," Swapanji continues, "I was too grief
stricken. I could not leave my father. I did not want to go to America.
As the eldest son of a religious family, there were many rituals
I had to perform. Khansahib was very kind, he told me to take my
time, to think about it." After several months, when Swapan's
mourning duties were completed, Dr. Chaudhuri urged his son to join
Ali Akbar Khan in California, "It was your mother's last wish,
so you must go."
"I arrived in America on May 5, 1981. I came to the College
and I began to teach. The first concert I played in America was on
May 9th." Swapanji sips from a cup of tea a student has brought
him. "At first, being here was a terrible experience for me.
My grief for my mother, it was a very difficult period in my life.
I had left all my friends, my family, and much of my professional
life in India. Nobody knew me. There were few Indian musicians here.
It was so different, a whole cultural difference... "Khansahib,
of course, treated me as a son, he was so kind to me, so loving.
He still treats me like a son. I am his son. There's no doubt about
it. Even though I'm now fifty half a century, he still scolds me,
he gives me love, it is all combined. He was giving me so much affection
at that time, trying to loosen me up, like teaching me to cook. I
didn't know how to make a cup of tea. I didn't know how to boil the
water. "I was living alone two doors down," he nods toward
the east from the College. "I was so lonely. I taught five days
a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday," he counts
the days on his fingers, "and watched television on the weekends.
Sometimes the students used to come, they'd bring tea from here.
But they were also busy, they were all working. It's a hard life
in America. It's not an easy life. It took me a long time to get
used to it. "I left in November and came back again in April,
'82 for Khansahib's sixtieth birthday. We had a concert, a great
concert. That picture," he indicates a picture above the red-carpeted
dais where he sits to teach, "is from that concert. I gave many
many concerts. I threw my whole life, my whole spirit into playing.
I played in such a way as to give the audience all my knowledge,
all my love of tabla." During the '80s, with endless practice
time and drawing on the profound emotions that ensued from his cultural
displacement, Chaudhuri's performances became displays of a dazzling
virtuosity. With an amazing depth of emotion, a crystalline beauty
of tone, a clarity of stroke, incredible speed, awesome variety,
charm, wit, and a charismatic playfulness Chaudhuri simply mesmerized
the audiences of America. He played with the many distinguished Indian
musicians and dancers who came more and more to perform in the West,
as well as with Western musicians trained in Indian music. Then he
began to tour Europe, Asia, and the other continents and countries
of the world. He played not only for sarod and sitar, but for sarangi,
and santoor, for vocalists, for flutists and for dancers. He played
solos, and with symphony orchestras, string quartets, and with other
percussionists. "Each one" he says, "is different,
not only the instrument, but the person, the situations. Each artist
you play with is unique. You have to listen very carefully for the
bols, for the instruments, the dancers, the different drums, are
all different. Each is an art in itself." And always, he continued
to play with father, mentor, guru, Ali Akbar Khan, adding to their
many years of intimate association. Today, after several decades
and fourteen years of continuous association at the AACM, they have
become as finely attuned to one another in performance as any of
the greatest masters of Indian music. He also began to teach at other
universities in the United States, Canada and at the Ali Akbar College
in Basel, Switzerland; but until Swapan Chaudhuri married Jane Rockwood
his life was not truly anchored in the West. Jane Rockwood Chaudhuri
is also a musician. Her studies of North Indian classical vocal music
began in 1978 with Laxmi G. Tewari at Sonoma State University. Then,
at San Francisco State University with Jnan Prakash Ghosh, who taught
both at SFS and at AACM, she studied tabla. When Ghosh returned to
India, she came to study vocal music with Ali Akbar Khan at AACM
and tabla with Zakir Hussain. When Swapan Chaudhuri arrived, she
began to study with him and, at times, assisted in teaching. The
love of music drew the two together. Married in 1988, Swapanji and
Jane now have two young sons, Nilanjan and Ishan. Recently, when
the older child, Nilanjan, turned five, he came to his father and
said, "You started to play when you were five. You promised
me when I was five you would teach me." "He likes a new
composition at each lesson." Swapanji chuckles. "I encourage
him to practice with his mother. She is very good. They both devote
some time each day to the tabla. When the children are old enough,
Jane would like to study again." "Does she want to play
professionally?" "I don't think so. To be a professional
is a whole different thing. It's a commitment, a life long commitment."
Now at fifty, secure in his accomplishment, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri
divides his time between performing and teaching in America, his
rigorous world-wide touring schedule, giving concerts and performing
at the great festivals all over India each year during the winter
concert season, and teaching in Calcutta. Having helped propagate
the knowledge of and love for Indian music around the world, he also
devotes an increasing amount of time to an ever deeper exploration
into the sources of his art. He finds great meaning and beauty in
the traditions handed down generation upon generation during the
tabla's four hundred year history. Recently he has presented many
of the old compositions of the Lucknow Gharana. "I always
try to learn more through my music," he declares. "I analyze
my playing. I think the truth is that if you can satisfy yourself,
people who are listening will be satisfied. "As you grow older,
you see things differently. It's not: 'I am controlling tabla.' It's
like when you do the puja, when you go to church, your whole attitude
is very different, you surrender yourself. I am under tabla's control.
I surrender myself because I know there is nothing I can show to
tabla. It becomes more and more like melody. The joy, the happiness
I don't think I used to get that before." Chaudhuri says that
when he plays he often goes into a trance-like state. He does not
know beforehand what he will play, nor, at times, after a concert,
is he conscious of what he has played. "Sometimes I don't
know until I hear the tapes." In the last few concerts he has
introduced traditionally based compositions that incorporated pakhawaj
bols. The pakhawaj, a two headed drum, is thought by some to have
been "cut in two" to become the ancestor of the tabla.
Its deep base tones are particularly associated with chanting and
dhrupad singing. These passages in the open more resonant, pakhawaj
style, played mainly on the baya, have electrified and bewitched
his audiences. When asked about them, Swapanji shakes his head and
smiles: "It was a surprise, even to me." Then he adds: "The
art is in the bass drum, the left hand. The right is all brilliant
speed and restlessness, like a child running about, but the depth,
the mood, the rasa, the beauty that tabla speaks comes from the left
hand." Though many cannot follow Pandit Chaudhuri's explorations
into melodic and mathematical structures, nonetheless, all can enjoy
the rhythms he discovers. Instinctively, music lovers respond with
delight as Chaudhuri arranges time and sound into myriad, magnificent,
multifaceted patterns. For pattern, rhythmic, mathematical pattern,
as ancient Indian philosophy as well as the relatively new Theory
of Chaos proposes, may be at the very heart of creation. To hear
Swapan Chaudhuri in concert is to share his love of tabla, his love
of drumming, his generosity. At times he is like a little boy giving
you a treat, his eyes laughing from under long black lashes, at times
he is stern, at times majestic, at times he throws back his head
to laugh with delight. At times the rhythms become so exhilarating,
so intense, that suddenly the heart stills, the breath slows and,
like being in the eye of a hurricane, it is like listening to silence.
It might be said there is here, living among us, one of those legendary
figures you read about in Indian musicology, that Chaudhuri may have,
like Tansen, the great musician of the sixteenth century, "a
power so great that he can, with his music, talk to the birds and
animals of the forest, bring rain, as well as change the hearts of
gods and men." Joyous is the single word that springs to mind
when trying to characterize Chaudhuri's art. He plays the tabla with
a profound elegance and a contagious joy.
The Golden Drumming of Swapan Chaudhuri is based on a series
of interviews and over a year of auditing Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri's
tabla classes. Selections from it appeared in India Currents Magazine.
Jan Haag, a freelance writer, can be contacted via 415-457-5903 or
through the Ali Akbar College of Music, 215 West End Avenue, San
Rafael, CA 94901. Copyright © 1995 by Jan Haag
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