Can anyone recommend tabla CDs to listen to? I prefer classical tabla to the fusion genre (begging the forgiveness of those of you here who do a lot of the fusion genre yourselves). I was looking at Zakir Hussain CDs, but a lot of the sound clips on amazon.com didn't even have tabla in them (like, if he was playing with so and so on the sitar, the sound clip was all sitar). . so I don't even know which of his CDs really have a lot of good tabla content.
It's hard to disappoint a pessimist.
My favourites are Thirakwa: Live in Bombay 1964 and Drums of India, Nizamuddin Khan's Tabla Nawaz cd and THE live video, Shankar Ghosh's: Tabla solo (Nasrook and Teentaal), Sarda Sahai's The art of Benares baj, Kishen Maharaj (for example): Brilliancy and oldest tradition, Gottlieb's tapes, Swapan Chaudhuri: The soul of tabla, Classics for pleasure, Bikram Ghosh: Talking tabla etc.
