The cultural psyche of Lucknow is heavily informed by a deeply sentimental nostalgia for past glories. Although the modern image of the city continues to learn heavily on qualities such as eloquent speech, refined manners, elegent poetry, subtle and sophisticated music and dance, and a host of rarefied arts and crafts ranging from embroidery to perfume, kite flying to cuisine, the reality of the present is perceived to be but a shadow of the 'golden age' that culminated in the reign of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (1847-56). The Tabla of Lucknow presents a synoptic overview of music making in the city of Lucknow based on ethnomusicological fieldwork conducted in the early to mid-1980s. It also documents and explores Lucknows celebrated tradition of tabla drumming as seen through the eyes of the head of the family of hereditary tabla specialists associated with the city since the late eighteenth century, Afaq Husain Khan (1930-90). Beginning with general information on the history of Lucknow and its pivotal role in the evolution of Hindustani music in the nineteenth century, the book studies and investigates the employment of musicians, political machinations in the music world, the social organization of Lucknows hereditary specialists, and traditional versus modern methods of musical training. Throughout this book, the paradigm of Lucknows cultural decline from pre-eminent centre of excellence to a quiet backwater is reflected in the Lucknow tabla traditions fight for survival and recognition amid the social and cultural upheavals of the past 150 years.

The 1903 Mrdang aur Tabla Vadanpaddhati is a revelatory text that has never been translated or analysed. It is a manual for playing the two most important drums of North Indian (Hindustani) music, the pakhavaj (mrdang) and the tabla. Owing to its relative obscurity, it is a source that has never been discussed in the literature on Hindustani music. Its author, Gurudev Patwardhan, was Vice Principal of V.D. Paluskar's first music school in Lahore from its inception in 1901 to 1908. Professor James Kippen provides the first translation of this immensely important text and examines its startling implications for rhythmic and metric theory. It is the earliest work on Indian drumming to contain a notation sufficiently precise to allow definitive reconstruction. The compositions are of considerable musical interest, for they can be readily realized on the tabla or pakhavaj. Kippen sets the work and objectives of the original author in the context of a rich historical, social and political background. By also discussing radical differences in the second edition of 1938, published by Gurudev's nephew, the vocalist Vinayakrao Patwardhan, Kippen illuminates the process by which 'tabla theory' was being created in the early 20th century. Both Patwardhans were enthusiastic supporters of Paluskar's nationalist imperatives, and active participants in his drive to institutionalize music, codify and publish notations of it, and promote a modern, Hindu vision of India wherein its identity could once again be linked to a glorious golden age in distant antiquity.