Hello, and welcome to the world of tabla. If you are a tabla player, or are seriously interested in the instrument, or North Indian Classical music for that matter, then we highly recommend book-marking this site.
The Tabla Site was created March 21, 1997. The page was constructed by Todd Dombrowski, an excellent tabla player and his guru, David Courtney, Ph.D. Todd did all of the HTML work while David supplied the material. The original tablasite was hosted on the servers at the University of New Mexico. We got our own home in 1998 when we moved to Pair Networks. During 1998 and most of 1999 the URL was www.tablasite.pair.com. During this period David started to take over some of the HTML.
In August of 1998 Shawn Mativetsky joined the team. Shawn is a percussionist with a broad background in music. He assumed the responsibility for maintaining the database.
A major change occurred in September of 1999. It was in this month that Todd Dombrowski left to pursue other things. The Pair Networks account was dropped, and the site shifted to Hiway Technologies (now known as Verio) to be hosted under David Courtney's domain, chandrakantha.com.
The latest change occurred in March of 2002. This was a complete rewrite of the site. This rewrite was necessitated in part by changing HTML standards, but there was one other reason. The larger domain of chandrakantha.com contains a lot of information on Indian music that are not specifically oriented to tabla. Navigation difficulties made most of this information unavailable to the average visitor. The rewrite allowed the users freer access to this larger body of information on Indian music.
Our goal is to have the most comprehensive site about the tabla from a North Indian Classical perspective. We have numerous sections dealing with all aspects of the tabla, from basic technique, to advanced theory, along with its role in North Indian Classical music, its history, acoustical physics, glossary of terms, repair and construction, etc.
This is a site for beginners as well as advanced students, and those interested about the instrument from a scholarly point of view.