The Music of Hindostan c8.s3.15

c8.s3.15

Good drumming is commoner, perhaps, than any other form of music. It is said to take a lifetime to become a good drummer, but the comparative failures manage to give much pleasure. The most interesting exponents of this art I heard at Trivandrum. One was a boy of seven who had won a medal at Ernakulam for his skill, and who played on a drum bound with silver. He played with great solemnity, with funny little poses of the head to right or left as if he were thinking of anything else but what he was giving his whole attention to. His drumming was in the ‘new style’, which seemed to consist of flurry, silence, flurry, silence. After his performance he went to sleep during the rest of the music, and was ordered off to go and play in the verandah. The other was a man of sixty, Somaji Bhāgavatār, who ranks with Rāmachandra as a foremost musician. He was most careful about the tuning of his *Mṛdangam* (in two F’s like the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, but an octave higher). The upper F (right hand end) was adjusted by wedge and hammer, and gave the most trouble; the lower, on the left, by application of more or less flour and water to form the *karane* (Hindostani *āṭā*). There were no antics; it was all pure drumming. A good deal of it was a quiet tapping of the time with the forefinger of the left hand; then little points appeared, and a climax, and a solo or two, and the general effect was that of reserve power.