Indian drumming has evolved over many centuries, and is generally considered to be unrivalled in its sophistication and intricacy. Tabla is the name given to the pair of hand-drums played almost universally across the Indian sub-continent, and is heard in all spheres of music-making, from devotional to folk to classical. Over the last two hundred years, tabla has come to the forefront of percussion instruments in North Indian classical music and dance, and is also increasingly used in contemporary Western music - by Bjork, Supergrass, Courtney Pine, Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh and John McLaughlin, to name a few.

Tabla probably developed as a hybridised instrument, most likely derived from the ancient mrdangm and puskara drums, known to have existed at least 1500 years ago. Its name probably comes from the generic Arabic word for drum - tabl, and possibly the Turkish word - dawal. There are also evocative legends around their creation, usually involving tempestuous sword-wielding court musicians, and the splitting in half of a horizontal drum (such as the ancient pakhawaj) resulting in the precursor of the two vertical drums now known as tabla.

These days, the bass drum, or bhaya, is, at about 30 cm high, the larger of the two, and usually made from copper or brass. The smaller drum - singly, also called tabla - is wooden (made from teak, rosewood or mango), and is tuneable to a precise pitch. The heads are goatskin with permanent black paste patches, and give a wide range of sounds and pitches when played with well-developed traditional technique.