Sharda Sahai was born in Benares in
1935, a direct descendent of Pandit Ram Sahai, the founder
of the Benares style ("gharana") of tabla playing. With the
inherent gift in his blood of the finest traits of the Benares
baj, he began at an early age to learn tabla from his father,
the late Pandit Bhagvati Sahai. Following his father’s demise
in 1946, he became a disciple of the inimitable Pandit Kanthe
Maharaj, himself a disciple of Sharda Sahai’s grandfather,
Pandit Baldeo Sahai.
Sharda Sahai started his professional career
at the age of nine, performing both as a soloist and as an accompanist.
He made his major public debut when he was sixteen, appearing
at the Italee Music Conference in Calcutta with the sarod maestro
Ali Akbar Khan. His professional activities in India have included
appearances as soloist and accompanist at all of the important
music conferences and festivals as well as performances with
every major artist of North Indian classical music.
He was awarded "A Grade Artist" status by
All India Radio in 1965. Also in 1965 he founded the Pandit
Ram Sahai Sangit Vidyalaya, an institute for training in classical
music and dance, located in Benares.
Sharda Sahai has performed over one thousand
concerts worldwide. His solo performances have been broadcast
on All India Radio’s prestigious National Program. His accompaniment
experience includes every major artist of North Indian classical
music- among others: sitarists Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, and
Nikhil Banerjee; sarodists Ali Akbar Khan and Amjad Ali Khan;
violist V.G. Jog; and dancers Gopi Krishna, Birju Maharaj, and
Sitara Devi.
In February, 1970 Sharda Sahai made a highly
successful tour of Europe, the United States, and Canada with
sarodist Amjad Ali Khan. His tabla playing made a powerful impression
everywhere he played, and in September, 1970 he returned to
the United States to accept an appointment as Artist in Residence
with the World Music Program at Wesleyan University. He remained
with Wesleyan University for five years, during which time he
was also a visiting professor at Brown University and Berklee
School of Music. Sharda Sahai’s superb ability as a performer
is matched by his ability as a teacher. Few Indian musicians
of his caliber have held as many teaching positions at such
prestigious western universities. In recent years he has been
dividing his time between busy teaching schedules, ongoing summer
tabla training programs in the U.S. and Canada, and the administration
of the Pandit Ram Sahai Sangit Vidyalaya in the U.K. In the
U.K., he was a Senior Lecturer at Dartington College of Arts
for six years, and he currently teaches tabla at Leeds University
and at Oxford University.
Sharda Sahai’s reputation as a tabla virtuoso
in India and in the West is unmatched. His position as the direct
descendent of Pandit Ram Sahai, the founder of the Benares tabla
baj (style), has endowed him as the bearer of a prodigious and
closely guarded repertoire of composed material. As the fountainhead
of the Benares Gharana, all of his performances are paradigms
of the popular and respected Benares style. Many of the younger
generation of tabla players and even some older players, from
within the Benares Gharana and from outside the gharana, look
to Sharda Sahai’s playing as the authoritative model of the
Benares style- a style which many tabla players attempt to emulate
and incorporate into their own repertoires.
Though Sharda Sahai is a guardian of tradition,
he is extremely well versed in fusion of North Indian classical
music with other styles. He has accompanied the well known South
Indian violinist L. Shankar, and has performed jugal-bandi (duet)
concerts with the leading exponents of the South Indian mridangam:
Shivaraman, T. Shakaran, and R. Raghavan. In the West, he has
performed with the avant garde composer John Cage, and the internationally
acclaimed percussion group Nexus. At EXPO ‘86 in Canada, at
EXPO ‘88 in Australia, and at the Commonwealth Drum Festival
in England, he performed with the World Drum Ensemble, a conglomeration
of over one hundred drummers from around the world performing
on the same stage.
Few musicians in the world attain Sharda Sahai’s
level of virtuosity. Whether he is demonstrating his mastery
of the tradition or his versatility in adapting to different
styles, his performances are spellbinding. Amidst the modernization
of India and the real danger that the important traditions of
Indian classical music may become diluted and faded, it is comforting
to know that one can still experience a performance played as
the founder of the Benares Gharana in the 1700’s would have
played it. The tradition lives through Sharda Sahai. |
