Mukta Das

Mukta Das was born into a family line of eleven generations of tabla makers. His father’s grandfather, Surendranath Das, set the standard the family still works to. Mukta started in his father’s shop in the village of Ranaghat Nadiya, alongside five brothers and his cousins.

In 1986 he moved to Kolkata to train under the tabla maker Nariyan Das. After fifteen years there he opened his own shop, Rhythm, in the Behala district; he took out a worldwide export licence in 1999, supplied the I.T.C. Sangeet Research Academy with a full set of new instruments the year after, and moved to a larger workshop in Tollygunge.

Materials matter to him as much as workmanship: camel hide for the straps, and goat hides obtained directly from the Kalighat temple. His tablas are played by Pandit Kishan Maharaj, Pandit Shankar Ghosh, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Pandit Kumar Bose, Pandit Samar Saha, Pandit Shures Tawalkar and Pandit Bickram Ghosh, and he keeps up a steady support of tabla students worldwide.