A sound experiment with the tabla and djembe

Taufiq Qureshi and Bickram Ghosh

It’s not every day that the tabla and the djembe combine to produce an album. That’s exactly what percussionists Bickram Ghosh and Taufiq Qureshi did recently with RamTa, their latest collection of work. Produced by Eternal Sounds, the collaboration brings together the two artistes’ distinct musical styles. 

Bickram and Taufiq are like-minded in their approach to rhythm, have performed together for three decades, and share a good camaraderie off stage too. When they finally decided to collaborate, the idea was to fuse the rich tradition of their legacy with their percussion instruments. 

The album combines the old and the new

It was Bickram who first “popped the question” last year, and the duo set a date right away. Taufiq went to Kolkata, where they started recording in Bickram’s studio. “When we met in the studio, there was no structured method. We just spontaneously decided on a time signature and a tempo,” says Taufiq, son of the legendary Ustad Alla Rakha Khan and the younger brother of Ustad Zakir Hussain. One of the first pieces they did was using the breath, voice and body percussion. They then used it to create layer after layer of rhythmic ideas.   

One of the standout tracks from the album is ‘Thumak Live’, named so by Bickram. A live interaction between two percussionists who love and respect each other’s work, the track happened when both musicians simply set up their instruments at an audio-visual studio and started playing live once the camera started rolling. “The track just has us playing and improvising,” shares Bickram. The compositional structure is very organic and instinctive, almost like in a live concert. 

RamTa’s tracks are an outcome of the artistes’ spontaneous improvisation
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Special Arrangement

‘Grooving Fives’ is an interesting delineation of the number five. “It doesn’t have a regular rhythm, rather a funky structure,” says Bickram. Another live track, ‘Matta’, is a challenging duet in the rhythmic cycle of nine beats. “We use a lot of vocal and body percussion,” adds Taufiq. For instance, ‘Dum (A Capella)’ has them bringing in a lot of elements of sounds that  have been created using their voice and body. They explore the traditional classical as well as other styles of playing in their solo playing. 

“Most of the things we did in the album are spontaneous improvisations,” says Taufiq. Along the way, there were many surprise elements too, like when Taufiq plays the jal tarang. Further, while doing another track, ‘The Mystic Tribe’, Bickram sings a part in a very high octave. “While doing ‘Grooving Fives’, there was a section where Bickram added some low duff parts, and I had to do a low conga to match. I borrowed the conga from a student of mine to complement what he played,” recalls Taufiq.

The duo plans to take RamTa to various cities in India, in multiple forums such as college festivals, public concerts and corporate shows. “We want to share this rhythmic message with as many people as possible,” says Bickram.