Ustad Taufiq Qureshi

Taufiq Qureshi was born in Mumbai in 1962 to the tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha, and learned the rudiments of tabla from his father, whom he describes as his guru and primary inspiration. His elder brother Zakir Hussain and the ghatam player Vikku Vinayakram were his other formative influences.

From a young age he was drawn beyond the tabla to percussion at large. At St Xavier's College in Mumbai he formed the world-music band Surya in the late 1980s, and a 1988 concert in Germany where he played tabla in a trio with his father and brother became the turning point that sent him toward what he calls the other rhythm. Over years of self-directed work he adapted tabla syllables to the African djembe, and he also plays duff, bongos, batajon and a range of other drums, together with body and vocal percussion.

He has recorded and toured widely, appearing on the Grammy-winning Global Drum Project and with Remember Shakti and Masters of Percussion, and he works extensively as a composer, arranger and rhythm programmer for theatre, television and film. He teaches at the family's Mumbai school.

Qureshi's playing carries the grammar of tabla onto hand drums from outside India, with body and vocal percussion woven into the same rhythmic sentences.