March 10, 2007

• Women Drummers - there are some, ya know....

   

  But not a lot.  A look at the drumlines of competition winning marching bands show a handful - if you love marching bands and want to check this out, go here - http://www.vicfirth.com/features_marching.html.  

  The No 1 band, the Blue Devils, has one woman on their drum line.  You have to dig in the competition videos all the way down to the end of the first competition group to Esperanza to find more women on the drum line, althought there are many disporting themselves about the field partially clothed in insipid choreography while waving flags and fabric through the air.  Oh where is a title 9 for equal support for girls playing something besides stringed instruments, piano, flute and the occasional clarinet?  I seem to remember being a feminist and fighting for making things better than this....

  I don't have time today to make this a pretty post - so here are lots of wonderful links in their most inelegant form.

  The Persian drummer, Payman Nasehpor, put together this guide to women drummers in honor of International Women's Day -listing not only well-known in the western drummers like Sheila E and Evelyn Glennie, but including a number of women, both western and playing in world music traditions, less well nor not at all known outside a limited circle of admirers. http://nasehpour.tripod.com/peyman/id40.html - this is a truly fabulous list of links, fabulous.

  I've been in love with the tabla for years.
  

  I studied singing and bharat nathaym dance when I was a grad student doing research in Pakistan. As the dancer's feet echo the "bol" or syllables of the drummers, I learned a bit both about tal, or rhythmic patterns, and "bol" (the Hindi word for "speak" - e.g., this is the "bol" for teen tal -

  dhaa dhin dhin dhaa,/ dhaa dhin dhin dhaa/, dhaa tin tin taa/ taa dhin dhin dhaa -

  where the drum sound to be played is first spoken aloud.
  
  In 1969 or 1970, I heard Ravi Shankar play at the community theater in Berkeley. Allah Rakha, his tabla player, was ill - his son,  Zakhir Hussain, now arguably the best tabla player in the world, who was 12 or13 at the time, filled in.  OMG!
  
  My older son had studied tabla a bit - some senior students in western street clothes were sitting on the stage with the musicians - Indian performance is more relaxed than ours, or was then.  He hiked his 9 year old self up there and sat just behind the sarangi/drone player for the entire concert.
  
  Oh, those were the days....

  In India and Pakistan women have traditionally been discouraged from learning tabla - unladylike, they said (how that echoes!).
  
  Now, the daughter of a famous tabla master, Rimpa Shiv, shown here as a child prodigy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JDMQxTZjnE, has broken that barrier like Anuradha Pal before her.

  Here's another clip of Miss Shiv, sitting with her father/teacher, with him doing bol for her to follow. Wow, I love this. http://vodeo.aol.fr/2-62-285-Rimpa-S....html?visu=285.  The look on her father's face when she finishes exactly right is absolutely beautiful.
  
  And here's the first internationally known woman master of the tabla , Anuradha Pal. ttp://www.anuradhapal.com/
  
  The video here shows Pal playing in teen tal (16 beats, 4 groups of four, see above) http://www.anuradhapal.com/mp3_video.htm
  
  There is a terrific forum for South Asian classical music - with a section devoted to tabla. You can find it here - http://forums.chandrakantha.com/view...63f5526d 3b32
  
  In the sticky on the top of that forum there are three pages of links to various performances on the tabla.

  ENJOY.

   

  pearlbamboo

   

  • 10:06 am
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