
The Tabla is North India’s most popular percussion instrument for devotional as well as classical music, and even popular and folk music. The Tabla consists of two single-headed, barrel-shaped small drums of slightly different size and shapes made of hollowed-out wood or clay or brass. Both drumheads have a central area constructed out of several thin layers of a paste made out of either wheat or rice-starch to which blackening is added. The playing technique involves extensive use of fingers as well as the palm to create different syllables known as bol[s], it is the precise construction and shaping of the central area which determines the instrument’s final tonal quality