WOMAD

Pandit Sharda Sahai

From India

Rivermead '97 will give festival-goers a chance to see two of the finest tabla players in the world at close quarters: Talvin Singh, the British Asian player who has collaborated with some of the country's most innovative dance acts is one. Pandit Sharda Sahai, one of the most respected players in the world, is the other. "Tabla" is a contraction of the term "tabla-bayan" (meaning "left and right"), which reminds us that this Indian percussion instrument is made of two drums. One has a body of wood, the other of metal, and between them they produce a rich range of tone and dynamics. Initially, the instrument was used in the final section of sitar or sarod raags, but its role has broadened. Sharda Sahai was born in 1935 and began his professional career as a tabla player at the age of nine. Since then, he has played with every major artist from India's northern classical tradition, including the sitarist Ravi Shankar, who is also on the bill this weekend, and the sarod virtuoso Amjad Ali Khan. He also has the distinction of having made the first album in the world devoted to a solo, uninterrupted tabla performance ('The Art of the Benares Baj'). This album, released in 1983, takes its title from Sahai's style of playing which, in turn, is named after the city of his birth, where it was first developed by one of his ancestors. Benares has also been the base, since 1965, of an institute for training in dance and music which was founded by Sahai. Sharda Sahai does not work solely in the Indian classical traditions. He has also performed with the avant-garde composer John Cage and is a member of the international percussion ensembles Nexus and World Drums. He has taught both in England and in India and has toured extensively around the world.