Though he was surrounded by the tabla from a very early age, Anubrata Chatterjee took some time before deciding it would be his profession. His father, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, is one of India’s leading tabla maestros, and the youngster was lucky to get some good breaks.
Making a mark
When he was nine, flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia invited Anubrata on stage for a short appearance. In his late teens, sarod exponent Ustad Amjad Ali Khan invited him as an accompanist. “I also accompanied my father on many duet concerts, and that’s where I received a lot of my training and decided to focus on this field,” says the tabla player.
Chatterjee is one of the performers at Saz-e-Bahar, the annual instrumental music festival organised by the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). The others in the line-up are sitar exponent Purbayan Chatterjee, sarangi player Sabir Khan and violinist Anupriya Deotale.
Growing up in Kolkata but now based in Mumbai, Anubrata was the last ganda bandhan (a sacred bond between guru and shishya) disciple of the renowned Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh. “Ghosh-ji was very old then and after he passed away, I started learning from my father, though he was often very busy with concert tours,” he recalls. Though their basic style lies in the Farrukhabad gharana, Anubrata also picked up nuances and compositions of the Lucknow, Punjab and Ajrara schools. “As tabla players, we all love to learn different things and develop our own styles,” he says.
The 33-year-old musician’s art has been primarily in the traditional form, either as a solo artiste or as an accompanist. Besides Chaurasia and Amjad Ali Khan, he has played with santoor great Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, sitar maestro Ustad Shahid Pervez and Kathak legend Pandit Birju Maharaj. But he also thinks it’s important to experiment with fusion styles. “Great tabla players like Ahmedjan Thirakwa and Samta Prasad innovated. Without doing that, one cannot move forward,” Chatterjee points out.
Fusion projects
It’s this thought that has led Anubrata to form groups like Laya-Curry and Beats and Pieces. “In the latter, we present traditional compositions in a different format. There are different musicians and each plays 15 minutes,” Chatterjee explains. One of his pet collaborations is with The Koto Tabla Project with Yumi Kurosawa, who plays the Japanese string instrument Koto.
Besides performances, Anubrata spends time teaching, being involved with the Music Academy for Tabla Research by Anindo Chatterjee (Matra), which attracts students from different parts of the world. “Today, the demand for tabla education is really high and this is set to grow exponentially over the next few decades. I am only trying to play my role in furthering this cause,” he concludes modestly.
Saz-e-Bahar will take place today and on April 13, at the Godrej Dance Theatre, NCPA; more details at bookmyshow.com
