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A Pathway to Knowledge
Looking for the Field
In the fall of 1994 , I left Vancouver for my first fieldwork trip to study
at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, an institute of music in New Delhi.
Not knowing any tabla masters in India, I assumed that I would find
contacts through starting my studies at a musical college. Like many
first anthropological trips to the field, my entry into Indian culture
and the life of tabla players was short-lived. After my first week in
Delhi, besides the intense culture shock I faced, the plague (both bu-
bonic and pneumonic, or so it was thought) broke out in Surat to the
south of Delhi and started to spread rapidly throughout the country.
A week later, when the airfields opened up, I left India without hav-
ing met a tabla player, teacher, or other musicians. My feeling of de-
feat was short-lived. A few days after returning to Vancouver, I went
to an Indian classical musical concert, where I met a tabla player by
the name of Satwant Singh. Satwantji agreed to teach me until I could
return to India a few months later. Rather than continue with my orig-
inal plans, I went, at Satwantji’s urging, to Mumbai to see his teacher,
Allah Rakha Khan, whom he referred to as Abbaji. And so I trav-
eled to Mumbai to meet Allah Rakha Khan not knowing much about
his history or school or life. When I first met Abbaji at his home in
Malabar Hills, he welcomed me with open arms as a student of Sat-
wantji’s. I was already in the school, and now I was being welcomed
as part of the larger family of the Punjab gharana. I was already an
apprentice.
After some time, I met Zakirji at his father’s home on his birthday.
By this point, I was used to welcoming all who were senior to me in
the musical world by touching their feet. As I attempted to touch Za-
kirji’s feet and wish him well on his day, he shook my hand and wel-
comed me to Mumbai. I asked him if I could learn tabla from him,
and he remarked that he only teaches in Seattle and the Bay Area of
California, as his father teaches in India. The following descriptions
provide a taste of my musical and anthropological journey following
Zakirji on the West Coast of North America. The ethnographic selec-
tions I present here are, in part, a response to Stoller’s ( 1995 ) call for
sensing ethnography, for attending to the cultural in every sense.
