Tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and musician Taufiq Qureshi discuss using vocal and body percussion to create their recent a cappella song, Dum, which released earlier this month. The duo shares that our body is the first instrument we have
Taufiq Qureshi and Bickram Ghosh
When two legends of Indian music, Bickram Ghosh and Taufiq Qureshi, come together, you expect fireworks. But what you get this time is something quieter and more intimate. The two have united to create Dum, an a cappella song that was released earlier this month. The form of a cappella has always attracted him, says Ghosh. “I’ve done a fair bit of work during the course of my career using just voice and striking my body. This has been a parallel journey to my classical music career. So, creating Dum with Taufiq bhai felt like a culmination,” he shares.
Both are among the leading percussionists in India — Ghosh, with a 24-year career as a tabla player, and Qureshi, having shown his command over different instruments, from the drums to the djembe. Yet, neither has trained formally in body or vocal percussion. In Dum, it’s just them playing with sounds, says Qureshi. “We’ve always explored sounds — different textures, surfaces, and techniques. Over time, we both realised that the body and voice are instruments in their own right.”
Their chemistry has been built over years of live performances, but Dum was different. It was an intimate studio experience, stripped of all instruments, with the two musicians relying only on breath, vocal syllables, and body percussion. Ghosh says that when they stepped into a Kolkata studio in March this year to record the song, they instinctively knew that it would lead to new discoveries. He adds, “We wanted to see what happened if we brought all our breath sounds, vocal syllables, and body rhythms into a space, and just played. It was electrifying. Each of us came with our own arsenal, our own styles. And then we arranged it like we would any composition.”
Despite its stripped-down technique, Dum sounds like a full-bodied orchestral arrangement. That, Qureshi says, comes down to their deep knowledge of sonic frequencies, having spent decades in the studio. “Both of us are tuned in to the idea of frequencies. Highs, mids, lows, you need all of them for a track to feel complete,” he explains. To him, the track also feels “ancestral”. He elaborates, “It feels primal because rhythm, in its origin, began with the body and voice. That’s how humans first made music. There is something ancestral about it. One of the vocal lines I did had a tribal flavour. When we added body percussion, it started sounding ancient and deeply natural because our voice and body are the most organic tools we have.”
The tabla maestro’s career has been marked with experimental streaks. Similarly, Qureshi, in his 36-year career, has beautifully blended Indian rhythms with contemporary music styles. Dum is a fitting experimental step in their journey. Ghosh reflects, “Both Taufiq bhai and I have treaded rare paths, blending classical foundations with new-world expressions. The world is ready for experimental work that is global, cross-cultural, but still rooted in musicality. Rhythm doesn’t have to come from an instrument. The body is the first instrument we have, and when we tap into it, something magical happens.”
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