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Raga for beginners: Tabla, sitar player introduces students to
Eastern music.
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian
Sitting backward on a dark stage, Big Sky High School's best
musicians heard their ideas of rhythm and melody turned upside
down and sideways.
They were gathered around Sandip Burman, an internationally
renowned tabla and sitar player from Durgapur, India. With a
style as imperious as it was unmatchable, he demonstrated the
mathematical precision of a musical style thousands of years
old.
“It's the first time I've ever been introduced to a different
culture of music,” said tenor saxophone player James Fahlgren.
“I was watching the way he uses the tip and back of his tongue -
I can try that with my reed.”
“I thought it was really complex,” added clarinetist Erin
Amsdill. “I really enjoyed it.”
Just as his playing demanded fidelity to precise rhythms and
melodies, Burman's teaching style demanded complete attention
from the class. He spotted and challenged anyone who appeared
distracted, and at one point, advised students to cease laughing
at a quip he made.
Burman first played his 20-string sitar with guitar student Matt
Berger, one of three musicians accompanying him on his tour. In
what he called a “guided improvisation,” Burman would lift out
melodies for Berger to mimic, sometimes playing together,
sometimes echoing the other man a beat ahead or behind. The two
would tune their strings without losing either the rhythm or the
underlying drone of the song.
He then asked percussionist Nick Kokonas to play the tabla, a
pair of vase-shaped drums. After Kokonas performed some stately
polyrhythms, Burman struck his own set like a cobra. Twisting
his shoulders and grinning for emphasis, he dropped perfectly
punctuated avalanches of beats from the two drums. Then, just by
the way he touched the skin heads, he played major scales and
chromatic scales as if he were hitting keys on a piano. By
shifting the edges and heels of his hands, he made the drums
whoop, squeak, drip and gurgle like water in a pipe.
The skills came from starting musical training when he was 6,
Burman said. He was accepted as a disciple of Pandit Shyamal
Bose of Calcutta, one of India's foremost tabla gurus. He has
since performed with Ravi Shankar, Bela Fleck, Al DiMeola and
Jack DeJohnette.
“I'm trying to get students excited,” Burman said. “I hope this
touring carries on and they get to become like us and carry on
the traditions. It is not easy, the responsibility.”
The Big Sky visit was one of dozens of school master classes
Burman conducted this spring during a 25-date performing tour of
the Pacific Northwest.
For Big Sky band director Leon Slater, the experience was almost
overwhelming.
“Really what this is about is opening kids' minds,” Slater said.
“I had a similar experience in college hearing Ravi Shankar. It
really opened my ears to listening differently. He uses time
signatures and counting methods we never hear in Western music.
When he plays, sometimes you could feel the groove and sometimes
it was like he was flipping time.”
Big Sky High School
students gather
around internationally renowned sitar and tabla player Sandip
Burman as he and guitarist Matt Berger improvise during a master
class at the school on Wednesday afternoon. Berger is one of
three musicians traveling with Burman as he tours the Pacific
Northwest. Photo by LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian
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