Pandit Suresh Talwalkar

Suresh Talwalkar was born on 20 July 1948 in Chembur, Mumbai, into the Keertankar family of Shri Dholebuva — a household in which kirtan, a sung and spoken devotional discourse, was part of daily life. His father, Dattatray Talwalkar, gave him his first tabla lessons.

He went on to train with Pandit Pandharinath Nageshkar and Pandit Vinayakrao Ghangrekar, and learnt Carnatic laya theory from the mridangam player Pandit Ramnad Ishwaran. He also regards the vocalists Pandit Gajananbuva Joshi and Pandit Nivruttibuva Sarnaik, whom he accompanied often, as gurus, and credits them with his understanding of how rhythm sits inside a raga performance. Because of this mixed training his playing is not attached to a single gharana; accounts of his style name Delhi, Ajrada, Farrukhabad, Benares and Lucknow material alongside Carnatic rhythmic thinking, and it is this synthesis that earned him the honorific Taalyogi.

His best-known contribution to the tabla solo is the use of vocal accompaniment in place of the customary instrumental nagma. Setting the taal cycle to a sung composition gives the soloist a mukhda to return to rather than only the sam, and makes the cycle audible to listeners unfamiliar with it; it also allows solos in less usual taals such as Deepchandi and Ada Chautaal. From the same thinking come his extended formats — Taal Mala and Jod Taal, and the group presentation Taal Yatra.

As an accompanist he played with the sarangi player Pandit Ram Narayan from the late 1960s, and with vocalists including Mogubai Kurdikar, Krishnarao Shankar Pandit, Vinayakrao Patwardhan and Gajananrao Joshi. He told The Hindu in 2022 that the only musician he still accompanies is Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar, a close friend and guru bhai, teaching having gradually taken the place of the concert career.

Teaching has indeed become the centre of his work. He began running group tabla workshops as early as 1973, on the view that collective practice does something one-to-one lessons cannot, and he now trains students at the Taalyogi Aashram in Pune and the Avartan Gurukul in Nashik, at SPIC MACAY gurukuls, and for several years in Dhaka for the Bengal Foundation. His disciples include Vijay Ghate and Ramdas Palsule. He is married to the khyal vocalist Padma Talwalkar; their children Satyajit and Savani Talwalkar are both musicians.

He received the All India Radio Award in 1966, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2004 and the Padma Shri in 2013.

Two things mark a Talwalkar solo. The first is the sung nagma: instead of a sarangi or harmonium looping the theka, a vocalist carries a bandish in the cycle, so the listener hears the taal as melody and the mukhda arrives as a musical event rather than a count. The second is the Carnatic arithmetic underneath — gati changes, layered speeds and korvai-like cadences, worked into Hindustani kaida and rela rather than bolted on. In accompaniment he is deliberately unshowy, a habit formed beside khyal singers, where his job was to hold the cycle steady and let the raga move.