The Farrukhabad gharana is a school of North Indian tabla that took shape in the 18th or 19th century around Haji Vilayat Ali Khan, a disciple of Bakshu Khan of the Lucknow gharana. The name comes from the town of Farrukhabad in present-day Uttar Pradesh. It counts among the six tabla gharanas most writers name, with Delhi, Ajrara, Lucknow, Benares and Punjab. Sources also spell it Farukhabad or Farukkhabad, and in Devanagari it reads फर्रुखाबाद घराना.
Vilayat Ali also became Bakshu Khan's son-in-law. Neither Nikhil Bhagat, writing in the Naad-Nartan journal in 2022, nor the tabla player and historian Aneesh Pradhan dates the founding, and popular references range from the early 18th century to the 19th. Bhagat names Vilayat Ali the founder and calls Farrukhabad a Lucknow branch grounded in the purab baj, the eastern style of open, resonant strokes.
Players strike both the kinar (rim) and the lav or sur, the middle of the right drumhead, so resonant purab strokes meet the closed finger strokes of the Delhi baj. Pradhan calls Farrukhabad a khula, or open, baj whose compositions bridge the closed and open styles. Gats, fixed compositions, sit at the centre of the repertoire, which holds many types of gat, with parans, compositions in the pakhawaj manner, and the chalan beside them. Bhagat writes that early players struck gat-todas open-handed, and that peshkar and qaida entered the repertoire later. Ahmed Jan Thirakwa called Farrukhabad playing 'pure tabla', free of the sounds of the nakkara and dhol.
Munir Khan belonged to the gharana by lineage but trained under many teachers across gharanas, and his pupils became known as the Laliana gharana, or Bambai gharana after his years teaching in Bombay. His nephew Amir Hussain Khan succeeded him as khalifa and spread the style across Maharashtra. Bhagat hears Delhi language and Farrukhabad improvisation in his qaidas and relas. Arvind Mulgaonkar and Nikhil Ghosh studied with him. A second line runs through Masit Khan, who taught Gyan Prakash Ghosh. Anindo Chatterjee learned the gharana's grammar from Gyan Prakash Ghosh over three decades. Karamatullah Khan, a direct descendant of the founder, represented Farrukhabad in Robert Gottlieb's 1977 tabla survey.
Key exponents
- Haji Vilayat Ali Khan, founder, dates disputed
- Munir Khan, khalifa and source of the Laliana branch, 1863 to 1937
- Amir Hussain Khan, khalifa after Munir Khan, composer and teacher
- Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, pupil of Munir Khan and Rampur court musician, 1891 or 1892 to 1976
- Masit Khan, teacher of Gyan Prakash Ghosh
- Karamatullah Khan, notable 20th-century player in the founder's line
- Gyan Prakash Ghosh, teacher of Nikhil Ghosh and Anindo Chatterjee, also trained in the Punjab gharana
- Nikhil Ghosh, founder of Sangit Mahabharati in Mumbai in 1956, 1918 to 1995
Sources
- Nikhil Bhagat, paper on Amir Hussain Khan, Naad-Nartan Journal of Dance and Music, vol. 10, issue 1 (2022)
- Aneesh Pradhan, columns on the Farrukhabad gharana and on Munir Khan, Scroll (2016)
- Robert S. Gottlieb, The Major Traditions of North Indian Tabla Drumming (1977)
- Susheela Mishra, memoir of Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, Vijaya Parrikar Library
- Sangit Mahabharati, Mumbai, biography of its founder Nikhil Ghosh
- Darbar Arts Culture Heritage Trust, artist profiles of Ahmed Jan Thirakwa and Anindo Chatterjee