Renowned tabla performer Tanmay Bichu dazzled the crowd at his most recent US and Indian gigs. In a special interview with The Pioneer, he talks about his family’s musical history, his early preference for tabla and leaving a lasting impression on the world
SHIKHA DUGGAL
Tanmay Bichu, a frequent performer at Indian classical and world music performances, wowed the audiences at four prestigious concerts in the US and India. He began the year with a fully booked solo Kathak performance, where he accompanied the internationally renowned Kathak dancer Shambhavi Dandekar. Since then, he has performed with Pt. Raghunandan Panshikar, at an Ustaad Ali Akbar Khan tribute concert in San Francisco and at a three-day Indian classical music festival called Ashavari Festival 2024 in California.
The extremely skilled tabla musician then gave us an exclusive interview in which he told us, “I think my maternal side of the family, with a rich Indian classical music heritage going back multiple generations, is where I get my musical genes from. Growing up, I was surrounded by music all the time, whether it was from my mother’s singing classes or practice or from my uncle’s tabla sessions. During my early years, I used to accompany my maternal uncle Shree Vinayak Naik to all of his tabla sessions, where I would sit on his lap while he played the tablas and instructed his students.”
Even when he was two years old, when he was able to sit up straight and reach up to the Tablas, which was taller than him, the sounds of the Tablas must have struck a chord with him the most! When his parents and uncle witnessed him playing the rhythms to hit songs on the radio, they discovered he had a natural aptitude for the tabla and rhythms. “I would use my entire palm to recreate the rhythms on the tabla, even though my fingers were too little. After we relocated to various places, I would spend all of my summer breaks at my maternal uncle’s house, where I would attend all of his academy lessons and study tabla for more than eight to ten hours every day,” the well-known tabla player continues.
He has his master, Pandit Ramdas Palsule, as an ideal model. Tanmay informed us that his guru, an engineer, operated a successful business out of his home office. Tanmay saw firsthand the extraordinary discipline he possessed in handling his work and his demanding practice regimen since Tanmay used to spend a lot of time at his house learning from him during his undergraduate years. Tanmay has been influenced by him all of his life and tries to emulate him. We learned about the distinctive method through studying with a number of distinguished tabla masters from various gharanas: “My training in India came from the Farukhabad Gharana, which is the well-known tabla style in Maharashtra. Given that Farukhabad features a number of compositions that are primarily finger-based, I believe it helped me increase my finger strength and dexterity.”
Tanmay began studying under Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, the leader of the Lucknow Gharana, after relocating to the United States. He has been studying carnatic rhythms for over 8 years and he has done a great job incorporating them into his repertoire. By adding a lot of dynamics to his performance, it enables him to demonstrate quite different playing styles (powerful and subtle) within the same performance when he is performing a tabla solo. Ustaad Zakir Hussain, unquestionably one of the most important Indian musicians of the time, has also been a teacher to him. He told us more, like, “Every performance is very dear to me and there is so much to learn every time I perform,” making this chat so much more engaging. “Based on the recent shows, the Ashavari Festival is clearly unique. When renowned Tabla musicians like Pandit Samar Saha and Pandit Ashish Sengupta came to speak with me in person and bestowed upon me their heartfelt congratulations for my musical endeavours, I was ecstatic.”
Curious about his thoughts on conceptualising his excellent collaborations, he said, “Preparing for a performance, especially when with other musicians, is a very abstract idea; as you know, Indian classical music is nearly totally improvised on stage. I consider it to be a lifelong process of preparation for every performance. When I was a child, cassette or CD recordings of Indian classical music were constantly playing in our home. Every time I came home, my dad insisted on having music playing in our home. That, I believe, had a significant impact on my musical journey.”
With a recent performance called the “Melodic Science” concert that left us speechless, he demonstrated the other side of music to us. He says, “Indian classical music is viewed as being very spiritual, but there has also been a strong scientific basis to this music. We decided to highlight this aspect and inform the audience about the science underlying Indian music because the connection with science is rarely discussed. Furthermore, we believed that the BMM Convention, which was taking place in Silicon Valley, would be the ideal audience for discussing this subject. We conducted extensive research on this subject and covered a wide range of subjects, including how the brain processes music, the reasons behind an octave’s seven notes, the effects of posture on music, the definition of perfect pitch and the effects of music on our mental states, including the chemical and neural reactions in our brains.” He attempts to enter a meditative state during practice and strengthen his bond with his tablas because he devotes a lot more time to his riyaaz than to performing on stage. However, he shared an extremely fascinating narrative that drew our attention: “When I perform in the USA, I frequently encounter audiences who are seeing tabla for the first time or who are even attending an Indian classical music concert for the first time. And that’s where having an education helps.”
In a kind message to our readers, Tanmay says that when you consider how much time has been invested in the development of this music to its current state, you will realise that a great deal of thought must have gone into creating it and that only ideas and concepts that were genuinely timeless could have endured over the years. Tanmay, therefore, thinks that traditional wisdom is crucial. The aim is to instill in the student a deep appreciation for music and foster an internal comprehension of musical aesthetics. This will ultimately empower the student to improvise and generate visually appealing ideas. He still listens to the works of the past maestros every day in order to be inspired by their timeless knowledge. “Traditional transmission is critical to the survival of our culture because it is the only way it can endure. However, I don’t think I’ve yet reached the point where I feel completely prepared to teach. It is challenging to find time for teaching when you have a full-time engineering job in addition to a demanding practice and performance schedule for music. I currently dedicate all of my time to assimilating my Gurus’ teachings, learning the subtleties of the many Gharanas and developing a solid theoretical and practical understanding of our music,” he concludes.
