Virtuoso Sam Evans Shares His Story

Melbourne musician Sam Evans with the complex percussion instrument that has become his life and love�tabla. (The Epoch Times)

MELBOURNE—It is ironic that we think of stories as being measured in and conveyed by words, ironic because most stories that we carry in our somewhat obscured memories are lived and inscribed by our senses more often than words.

Melbourne musician Sam Evans has been busy forging and telling a new story with the most melodic and complex percussion instrument that has become his life and love—tabla.

He is part of the Fine Blue Thread trio, a project with Indonesian singer Ria Soemardjo and well known cellist Helen Mountfort. The trio have been playing sell out shows throughout Australia and have received rave reviews for their debut album, Red Mountain.

Mr Evans is unique in that he also plays alongside virtuosi of classical Indian music in India, an honour rarely accorded to a non-native. But he is adamant to give tabla a new voice and a new cultural context.

“I started learning tabla because I was playing drum kit before that for 20 years and had decided that I wanted to find something that had a little more to it, a little more history, a little more repertoire and depth to it. And so I ended up playing traditional Indian tabla because I wanted to learn tabla, not because I wanted to learn Indian music,” Mr Evans told The Epoch Times.

Indeed, Mr Evans hopes that the tabla, just like other instruments with iconic sounds, can one day relieve themselves of their strict past associations and be appreciated in their own right.

“I’ve always been a bit of an improviser, a bit of a jazz person and so tabla for me is the next voice.”

Mr Evans explains that in Indian music “there are very strict rules and within those rules there is room for improvisation. It lacks the kind of expression that I’m looking for. It’s always the same form.

“With Fine Blue Thread and the album Red Mountain my goal is to not play Indian music. I try very hard not to play Indian phrases or lines and use the instrument just as an instrument for its own voice.”

The album has oriental themes, but is decidedly a huge departure from the strict Indian form, especially obvious after listening to it a few times. Mr Evans’ fluttery tabla sometimes carries Soemardjo’s crystalline voice and sometimes runs circles around Mountford’s warm and soulful Baroque cello. Silence plays a big part in its ephemeral, dream-like quality and perhaps harks back to a Japanese Zen aesthetic. But all in all, Red Mountain throws down the gauntlet to modern classical music that borrows from, but refuses to be defined by tradition or place.

“It’s important to hear tabla as an instrument just like any other instrument. There’s an argument that somehow you will damage the tradition through playing in a non-traditional way. I don’t believe that at all. I can’t hurt the tradition. It will always exist. Usually the way that people who’ve never heard Indian music would come to hear Indian music is through a bridge like what we’re doing. I would argue that those sort of collaborations can assist the growth of traditional Indian music as opposed to damaging it.”

While most musicians who start out must contend with mastering their instrument, the kind of unwavering passion for tabla that Mr Evans has, allowed him to break through some unusual obstacles. He recounts how when he first travelled to India to buy tabla drums he had no access to the master drum makers.

“In India, you can’t just buy drums from any maker. You can’t just walk into a shop and say, ‘I’ve got the most money, give me the best drum’. The best makers will only make for the best players or their students. Years ago the best makers wouldn’t talk to me at all. And then about seven years ago, I became the student of Anindo Chatterjee and he of course has contacts with the best makers and when they knew that I was learning form him I had a chance to buy the best drums. There’s [a] huge difference in quality.”

Sam Evans is doing more than anyone to cement tabla into our cultural context. His submission to the VCE board to have tabla accepted as an instrument that can be studied at VCE level as tabla player and not a percussionist, has just been accepted. This is apart from the fact that he runs his own tabla school and lectures at Monash University in Indian music where he co-founded and directs the Monash World of Music Orchestra.

Music from the Red Mountain CD has recently been included on a BBC compilation CD–A Beginners Guide To The Music Of India—which also features Ravi Shankar, Nustrat Fateh Ali Khan and Nitin Sawhney.

I ask if he would ever leave tabla just as he left the drum kit years ago and perhaps take up something that is not a percussion instrument. To this he replies: “For whatever reason, I have to play the drum and tabla is, I think, the most musical drum, the most melodic. I’m never going to leave tabla.”

A fitting answer from a musician whose heart beats to a different rhythm.

Visit www.finebluethread.com and www.2drums.net for further information about future concerts.