My former doctoral student Lowell Lybarger had the good fortune to study with Shaukat Hussain Khan in Lahore. Sadly, Shaukat Hussain died of a protracted illness in January 1995, right in the middle of Lowell's fieldwork. Nonetheless, Lowell managed to learn wonderful material from this man whom everyone described as a kind and entirely dignified gentleman. Shaukat Hussain was the accompanist of choice for Pakistan's great vocalists and instrumentalists, and he always offered impeccable support. As a soloist one hears the Delhi roots of his sound mixed with a truly Panjabi sense of rhythmic complexity (he also learned from Qader Bakhsh). One can hear this complexity in the varied internal phrase lengths of pieces and in the tal structures. This excerpt is taken from a solo in Lachmi tal (cf. Lakshmi), but here it is not the 18-matra version but a 21-matra version. Shaukat Hussain plays a char-darje-ki-gat (compare this to Nabi Bakhsh's one played by Pawan Kumar Verma).

Visit Sadarang's gallery of Punjabi tabla players.