The Ajrara gharana, also spelt Ajrada, is a school of tabla playing that arose in the late 18th or early 19th century in Ajrara, a village in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh, which gives the school its name. Ajrara counts among the six tabla gharanas most writers recognise, alongside Delhi, Lucknow, Farrukhabad, Benares and Punjab.
Most accounts trace the gharana to two brothers, Kallu Khan and Miru Khan; Miru also appears as Meeru. The brothers learnt in Delhi under Sitab Khan and brought that material to Ajrara, so the school stands as an offshoot of the Delhi gharana. Sources differ on Sitab Khan's tie to Siddhar Khan, the Delhi gharana's 18th-century founder. Oxford Reference calls Sitab Khan the grandson of Siddhar Khan through a son, Bugra Khan, while the SwarGanga Music Foundation names him a disciple of that son.
Ajrara players keep the Delhi technique and add the ring finger. Like Delhi, the gharana follows the closed or bandh style, with less resonant strokes. It gives the bayan, the left-hand bass drum, a larger part than Delhi does. Aneesh Pradhan describes jhul, a swaying pattern in the bols made by changing wrist pressure on the bayan. The gharana is best known for qaidas, themes played with set variations, in aad laya, three strokes to every two beats, and in tisra jati, phrasing built on groupings of three. Renu Johri calls the aad laya qaida the gharana's signature pattern, though every tabla gharana now plays it.
Habibuddin Khan is the best-known Ajrara master of the 20th century. Robert Gottlieb's study of six tabla traditions represents the gharana through older tapes of him, since he had stopped performing by 1971, when Gottlieb recorded the other five masters. His father, Shammu Khan, gave him his first training, and he learnt from masters of other gharanas, Delhi among them. Sudhir Kumar Saxena trained with him at Meerut and taught for 33 years at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Today Ustad Akram Khan, son of Hashmat Ali Khan, plays in the gharana. He took his first lessons from Niazu Khan and learnt from his great-grandfather, Mohammad Shafi Khan.
Key exponents
- Kallu Khan and Miru Khan, brothers and co-founders, late 18th or early 19th century
- Habibuddin Khan, 1899 to 1972, 20th-century master and the gharana's representative in Gottlieb's study
- Sudhir Kumar Saxena, 1923 to 2007, pupil of Habibuddin Khan who taught tabla at Baroda
- Niazu Khan, teacher who gave Ustad Akram Khan his first lessons
- Ustad Akram Khan, present-day exponent
Sources
- Robert S. Gottlieb, Solo Tabla Drumming of North India (1998), expanded from The Major Traditions of North Indian Tabla Drumming (1977)
- Aneesh Pradhan, article on Habibuddin Khan and the Ajrada gharana, Scroll.in (2016)
- Renu Johri, Gharanas of Tabla and Its Signature Patterns, Sangeet Galaxy (2014)
- Sudhir Kumar Saxena, The Art of Tabla Rhythm, Sangeet Natak Akademi and D.K. Printworld (2018 edition)
- Oxford Reference, entries on Sitab Khan and Habibuddin Khan (n.d.)
- Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, PhD thesis comparing the Ajrada and Farrukhabad tabla gharanas (n.d.)