Tabla of Lucknow

The cultural psyche of Lucknow is heavily informed by a deeply sentimental nostalgia for past glories. Although the modern image of the city continues to learn heavily on qualities such as eloquent speech, refined manners, elegent poetry, subtle and sophisticated music and dance, and a host of rarefied arts and crafts ranging from embroidery to perfume, kite flying to cuisine, the reality of the present is perceived to be but a shadow of the 'golden age' that culminated in the reign of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (1847-56). The Tabla of Lucknow presents a synoptic overview of music making in the city of Lucknow based on ethnomusicological fieldwork conducted in the early to mid-1980s. It also documents and explores Lucknow's celebrated tradition of tabla drumming as seen through the eyes of the head of the family of hereditary tabla specialists associated with the city since the late eighteenth century, Afaq Husain Khan (1930-90). Beginning with general information on the history of Lucknow and its pivotal role in the evolution of Hindustani music in the nineteenth century, the book studies and investigates the employment of musicians, political machinations in the music world, the social organization of Lucknow's hereditary specialists, and traditional versus modern methods of musical training. Throughout this book, the paradigm of Lucknow's cultural decline from pre-eminent centre of excellence to a quiet backwater is reflected in the Lucknow tabla tradition's fight for survival and recognition amid the social and cultural upheavals of the past 150 years.