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The Lahara

by David Courtney working tools

The lahara (literally “a wave”) is the repetitive melody used to accompany the tabla and pakhawaj solo.  It is also used to accompany the Kathak performance.

The lahara is curious, be­cause it re­pre­sents a reversal of the usual roles of the music­ians.  Normally the tabla player plays a repetitive pattern which allows the main musician to improvise.  How­ever in the tabla solo, it is the tabla player that be­comes the main artist and while the sitarist, harmonium player, sarangi player or some other instrumentalist, as­sumes a sup­portive role.  The lahara is what these artist play in order to accompany the tabla player.

Although it would appear that play­ing the lahara is a trivial task; it is not.  One must have a very well developed sense of rhythm, as well as an under­stand­ing of tabla or kathak.  Fur­ther­more, one must be sensitive as to when there are tempo changes.  Failure to keep up with any of these things can cause the en­tire performance to come crumbling down.

There is oc­casion­ally con­fusion re­garding terminology.  Some parts of India refer to the lahara as “naghma”.  Fur­ther­more, the term Lahara is some­times (incorrectly) used to refer to the en­tire tabla solo in its broad sense, and not just the accompaniment melody.

It is ext­remely impor­tant to emphasise the sub­jective and ar­tis­tic compo­nent of the lahara.  That is to say that if a lahara sounds good to you, that is all that it takes to make it ef­fec­tive.  There­fore, the laharas that are men­tioned in the next pages have a cer­tain latitude.  For insta­nce, a Chautal Lahara may work just fine for Ektal; do not feel constrained to use the laharas ONLY in the tal to which they are as­cribed.  There are of course natu­ral limits to the degree to which laharas may be used; ob­viously you would not wish to use a Jhaptal lahara for Rupak tal unless you make some very sig­ni­fi­cant structural changes.

Laharas