The Living Drums
celebrating Ustad Alla Rakha and his tablas
Ustad Alla Rakha is an icon whose music bridged divides, uniting people in India, Pakistan and across the world.
Join us to celebrate his lasting legacy on South Asian classical music in this concert-cum-conversation on the tabla.
This event highlights the arrival of Ustad Alla Rakha’s very own ‘London tabla set’ at the Manchester Museum’s South Asia Gallery. These ‘living drums’ were originally donated to the British Museum in London by his daughter Mrs Khurshid Qureshi Aulia in 2019.
Manchester-based Ustad Shahbaz Hussain, a disciple of Ustad Alla Rakha, is a world-renowned performer of classical music, who has performed across the world and in UK. He will perform a trio on the tabla with his two sons and disciples, Kayam Hussain and Ali Hashim.
In collaboration with academic Dr Radha Kapuria (Durham University), the event will also feature a conversation with Mrs Khurshid Qureshi Aulia, Ustad Alla Rakha’s eldest daughter and founder of the London-based Alla Rakha Foundation. It is thanks to Mrs Aulia’s generous donation of her father’s tabla set to the British Museum that they are currently on display at the Manchester Museum.
Ustad Alla Rakha, along with his son Ustad Zakir Hussain, became the pioneering representative of the Punjab gharana or lineage of tabla performing on the international stage during the twentieth century. Along with his collaborator, Pt. Ravi Shankar, he brought Hindustani classical music to the world stage, and it is fitting that his contribution is celebrated in an international city like Manchester.
The event pays tribute to a musician who worked hard to unite the music-lovers of both India and Pakistan. Like many South Asian Muslims, Ustad Alla Rakha’s family is divided between the two nations, and music serves to unite his many disciples, both Indian and Pakistani.
Leeds-based academic, Dr Radha Kapuria (Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University), is the author of Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs (2023). She has curated two similar concert-cum-discussions in the past, including a unique online concert on Partition’s Musical Legacies in August 2022, featured by BBC Punjabi. She also created the Bridges podcast on musical memories of Punjab for the Sheffield edition of the 2020 Being Human Festival.
