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Lightning fingers Bickram Ghosh

When Bickram Ghosh does things, style is definitely involved.

Whether it’s a live concert where he breaks into acapella and keeps the audience hooked, whether the fingers are simply flying in an invisible flurry across the tabla, whether you’re listening to him accompanying Pandit Ravi Shankar, or whether he’s jamming with members of his group Rhythmscape.

“Drum Invasion” is the rhythm raja’s recent album (from the stables of Music Today), where he plays the classical tabla, mridangam, pakhawaj, kanjeera, dhol, khol, dholak, the African djembe, the Persian darboukka, the rek, and the Mongu drum, among numerous others. “I was being asked by people why I hadn’t done an essentially percussion album.

I thought that was a valid point. I began as a classical tabla player and did that for a good 16 years.

Then I started experimenting with multi-percussion kits. This album features hand-drums I’ve collected from all over the world.” For Indian classical instrumentalists, it’s always been solo instruments, he observes.

“I’m not a master of these drums. I go with the sound; the finger-technique is my own.”

He goes on to explain how Indian percussionists use each finger as one unit while in the case of western drums, each hand is one unit; providing Indian percussionists with so much more speed and variations in sound.

Having learnt the tabla from his father Pandit Shankar Ghosh, and then the mridangam from Pandit S. Sekhar, Bickram is known for being a favourite with Pandit Ravi Shankar (with whom he’s played for over a decade and with whom he performed on the Grammy-winning album “Full Circle”) and later Anoushka Shankar.

He’s performed on the title track of George Harrison’s posthumously released album “Brainwashed”. His solo albums “Talking Tabla” and “A Tabla Odyssey”, fusion albums “Rhythmscape” and “Folktail” have done phenomenally.

Along with Ustad Zakir Hussain he’s seen as one of the tabla maestros who brought the instrument from being an “accompanying” one to the forefront of the stage.

“I guess every instrument travels its course like every individual. Today everything is so democratic, you survive on sheer merit. Zakirji has shown the path and I’m doing my bit.”

Acapella (imitation of an instrument sound with your mouth), he says is the funkiest thing happening on the Indian music scene now.

“The West is fascinated by our acapella because we have a huge vocabulary of sounds.”

Bickram Ghosh has been flooded with offers to compose film music. He’s doing three Bengali and two Hindi films.

He’s completed two collaborations on private albums — “Sunev” with Pete Lockett (the multi-percussionist who does rhythm design for James Bond films) and Djamel Beynelles, an Arabic violinist.

He’s also finished “One” with the French band Mezcal Jazz Unit. He’s also working on “Repurcussion”, another album with Lockett and a yet untitled new-age album.

But despite all his leanings toward fusion, Bickram still identifies himself passionately with the tabla.

BHUMIKA K.

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