Tabla player kicks off IWeek
By Vinod Narayan, contributing writer
Posted on September 28, 2006

Musicians are abundant in the world today and many are very talented. Devapriya Nayak is one of them.

On Monday, Nayak kicked off International Week with a tabla performance on the commons and held a class in the Music Building for anyone interested in learning how to play the tabla.

For some, playing the tabla drums is difficult even with much practice. The coordination of the hands with the rhythm could be very hard to grasp. However, Nayak claims, it came naturally to him.

“Out of all the brothers in the family, I was the one who got hooked onto music,” he said.

Nayak’s mother was a sitar player, and he credits her for the musical influence. Nayak was born in West Bengal, and started learning the tabla at age 3 from his grandfather. His skills developed quickly, and he joined a band by the age of 7.

After playing for a couple of years with the band, he went his own way.

“I officially went solo at 11 and played for All-India Radio as I performed a 15-minute tabla solo,” he said.

Nayak’s life to that point had been music, and by the time most learn to drive, Nayak went pro.

“I probably turned professional by the age of 16,” he said. “It is quite hard actually to pinpoint when I started to do this for a living.”

In 1981, Nayak came to the United States to study at Penn State. With His love for tabla and music still strong, he continued to play in different shows and collaborated with different bands throughout his college years and after graduation.

He feels lucky to have run into some of the greatest Indian and Western musical personalities in the world. He spoke of one event where he met the tabla legend of India, Zakir Hussein.

“In the early ‘80s, I was studying at Ali Akbar College in San Francisco. At the same time, Zakir Hussein was teaching at the college,” he said. “I played with music with him, learned from him, and then slept in the music truck due to playing for hours on end, into the night,” he said.

Even now, at age 48, he said he is more passionate than ever promoting the tabla, “I was in Baltimore when I was playing in a show with Dennis Chambers. Dennis turned to Zakir Hussein and said, ‘If the tabla is played right and is grooving, the tabla can make intoxicating sounds that are translucent,’” he said.

Nayak said he is in a good place right now as a teacher and an on-and-off performer, because he feels he is a better learner when learning through others.

“Every concert is a new avenue opening up to me. Every concert is a brand-new beginning for me,” he said.

“It’s a chance to meet someone new and talk to someone different. It’s exhilarating and exciting.”

According to Nayak, schools like JMU give him the chance to not only showcase his skills, but show kids what he has learned.

“The goal is to stay with it and promote the cause of tabla because it is important. For the next five to six years, I’d like to just play at universities,” he said. “Teaching the tabla to those who have never heard the sound and to see what they think is a fun experience for me, because it gives me a different feel toward something I have known practically my whole life.”

Today, Nayak and his wife live in Northern Virginia where he teaches tabla in the basement of his house. He still makes time for a few performances across North America. He has also collaborated on a new CD called Probe, where his tabla is mixed in with Indian classical music and jazz music. “I have always wanted to make a mark for myself,” he said.