How to Build a Tabla from Scratch

Travel Day 873 – Kolkata, INDIA

It was day three of the Tablaphilia rehearsal, but the friendly owner of the Tabla store yesterday had invited me to come back in the morning because I would have the chance to learn how to build a Tabla from scratch…

Application of the black Shyahi on a Tabla

Since I had learned a trade myself and especially because I was interested in Tabla as an instrument, it seemed only logical that I would go and have a look how the Tabla was actually put together. Well, it was actually put together manually and with the use of hands and feet. The workers just sat on the floor, holding the Tabla with their feet and pulling the leather strings by hand. It was quite an interesting sight and pretty hard labor…

Actually the wooden bodies for the Tablas came from a different shop, but everything else was done on site. One worker was squatting down and scraping off the fur of the cow skins, while another was scraping down the goat skins. Once the soaked skins were done, they put on top of the wooden body, one layer of cow skin and two layers of goat skin. The tensioning was then done by temporary leather straps and the outer ring was woven around. After a while of drying the temporary attachment was cut off and the final leather traps were pulled through the outer ring. After some last cutting and the application of the black Shyahi, the Tabla was then  tuned and finally done after some four days of work…

While a lot of the four days time was used for the drying of the skins, I was still able to follow most of the steps on various Tablas in different stages and I was really glad that I had come out to see the whole process. Understanding how much work was involved in producing a good Tabla gave me a new appreciation of the instrument and the skillful craftsmanship that it involved…

Stretching of wet Skin on wooden Tabla

In the afternoon it was then back to another round of Tablaphilia rehearsal and hearing the entire composition twice up and down. While the symphony was sounding better every single time it was plaid, my main focus soon became the question of what to do later on today. It was Christmas eve and even if nothing really reminded me of Christmas here, I still wanted to do something…

In the end I opted for a short visit at St. Paul’s Cathedral and a nice local dinner. While the dinner was great, the mess in the cathedral was unfortunately at midnight and so I ended the day with the resolution to come back tomorrow morning…