Denise Nuttall
want a nicer house. I don’t know—who knows? We just want to
go forward. I have always noticed that when I have my students
play with a tape they are always rushing. They are ahead of the
tape by a couple of steps. I don’t know why. There is just a natural
tendency to drive it as opposed to just letting it relax. We always
drive it. Always there is this drive.
The student remarked, “And you are steady?” Zakirji immediately
replied:
I don’t think I’m steady! I am also driving it. It’s just that I have a
little bit more control over how much drive. It’s just not as much
as someone else, right? I have seen drummers who naturally tend
to relax so much that they are actually dragging it. There are such
drummers who drag it, but then there are others who drive it. Al-
though it seems to be moving forward, sometimes it doesn’t really
move forward as much as it actually seems. It just means that it
has an up feeling. I’ve rarely found drummers who are steady. In
Indian music, it’s a natural tendency to start very slow and end up
very fast. (Hussain 1996 )
As class continued, Zakirji led us through various types of exercises.
He would stop once in a while and comment on someone’s hands. Of-
tentimes, he didn’t need to speak but signaled his displeasure with a
student’s laziness of the hands, body, and lack of concentration with
various gestures. He looked at his hands and then looked at ours and
shook his head. “Do your hands look like this?” Zakirji yelled out
over the motion and sound of twenty-five tabla students. The next mo-
ment he would have us write down the bols, all the while telling jokes
and making us laugh. Emam and Tor would chime in as well, creating
a very relaxing and welcoming atmosphere once again.
Zakirji played on, introducing various tihais that we could use in
our tabla repertoire. He would present one tihai and then using a
similar pattern and the same bols to develop it into another one by
changing the rests and accents. He questioned us on our knowledge
of a tihai. What was it supposed to do? When do you use it? How
could we define it? Not entirely happy with the answers given, Za-
kirji took great care in explaining the structure and beauty of a tihai
in various compositions.