Badal Roy

Badal Roy is a tabla player, percussionist, and recording artist from Bengal, India, known for his work in jazz, world music, and experimental music. He also plays a variety of percussion instruments including shakers, bells, rain stick, and flexatone. He has performed with Miles Davis and recorded on his albums On the Corner, Big Fun, and Get Up with It. Badal has performed and recorded with many other leading jazz musicians, including Dave Liebman, Pharoah Sanders, John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Herbie Mann, Pat Metheny, Lester Bowie, Airto Moreira, Charlie Haden, Purna Das Baul, Yoko Ono, Muruga Booker and Ornette Coleman (playing in Coleman's electric band Prime Time). In the 1990s Badal began performing with the Brazilian guitar duo Duofel. He has also collaborated with Kenny Wessel and Stomu Takeishi in the fusion trio Alankar; they currently have one album entitled Daybreak, which was included in JAZZIZ Magazine's Top 10 Critic's Picks of 1998.

Badal has appeared and offered workshops at RhythmFest, the Starwood Festival, and at the SpiritDrum Festival, a special tribute to the late Babatundi Olatunji (co-sponsored by ACE and Musart) with Muruga Booker, Jim Donovan of Rusted Root, Halim El-Dabh, Jeff Rosenbaum and Sikiru Adepoju, among others. In 2004 Roy worked with Richie Havens on the album The Grace of the Sun. In the first half of 2006, Roy traveled to Japan in order to appear in a tribute for David Baker, his recently deceased recording engineer and friend. He is a member of the Miles Davis alumni group Children on the Corner, and in 2008 the album Miles from India, a tribute to Miles Davis on which Roy appeared, received a Grammy nomination. He recently performed with Indian guitarist Amit Chatterjee and the Rodrigo G. Pahlen Group in Barcelona, Spain. He is featured on the ACE CD Bonfire Dreams.

The Art of the Indian Tabla

The Tabla is an enormously versatile instrument which originated in India. The right hand drum is called Tabla, and the left hand drum is called Bayan. The Tabla is also a tunable instrument. To learn to play Tabla you have to learn the language of the right hand drum ( tin, tun, te ,ta and na etc), the language of the left hand drum (ga, ge, kat etc), and how to use both hands together (dha,dhin, dhe etc). You have to sing the language and play the language (sound). Badal will show how to play 4 beats, 6 beats and 7 beats etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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