Pandit Chatur Lal
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A brief biography
Suanshu Khurana, April 28, 2025: The Indian Express
The Department of Posts, Government of India, will release a commemorative stamp to honour tabla exponent Pandit Chatur Lal, the first Indian percussionist to introduce tabla to the West in the 1950s. The stamp will be unveiled during the grand finale of Chatur Lal’s ongoing centenary celebrations, to conclude in April 2026.
While Punjab gharana’s Ustad Allah Rakha, a huge name in the field of percussion, remains synonymous with tabla’s global rise as he accompanied sitar giant Pandit Ravi Shankar, sarod maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and violin great Yehudi Menuhin at some of the most sought-after venues and festivals, including Woodstock and Montery Pop, it was Chatur Lal who was first in the unfamiliar spaces comprising western audiences.
In fact, he was a pioneer who introduced tabla to a western audience in the 50s and early 60s.
One of Chatur Lal’s most enduring contributions was his role in the first-ever LP of Indian classical music recorded for Western audiences — a 1955 album featuring Ali Akbar Khan, produced with the help of Yehudi Menuhin for Angel Records (EMI).
Chatur Lal’s centenary year has brought him back into focus. Since he passed away in 1965, at 40, cutting short a rising career, not enough is known about him aside from a road in his name in New Delhi’s South Extension and a small museum named Ta Dha housed in the musician’s home not far away.
Early Life
Born in Udaipur, Chatur Lal came from a family of court musicians and farmers. He learned tabla under the aegis of Ustad Abdul Hafiz Ahmed Khan, whose training was from the famed Jehangir Khan, the court musician of Indore who had trained in the Farukhabad and Lucknow styles. Chatur Lal was the older of the two siblings, the younger one being one of sarangi’s biggest names – Pt Ram Narayan.
He joined Delhi’s All India Radio (AIR) as a staff artiste in 1947. Pandit Ravi Shankar was appointed as the Director of Music at All India Radio (AIR) in 1949, a position he held until 1956. The two met here and often played together at music conferences. Chatur Lal had travelled with noted vocalist Pt Omkarnath Thakur to a few Middle Eastern countries in 1949, but it is his proximity to and friendship with Shankar that was to change his life.
Role of Yehudi Menuhin
In 1952, when Menuhin visited India, he heard Shankar and Chatur Lal in a private concert and was transformed by what he heard. “That was music-making I could have only dreamed of,” Menuhin is quoted to have said. These concerts had come about after Menuhin’s meeting with Shankar in 1952. The violinist called the music “fascinating, highly evolved, and refined,” as mentioned in his autobiography Unfinished Journey.
About Chatur Lal, he said many years later, “Chatur Lal was one of those few supreme pioneer musicians who won for India the great and growing following it now commands in the West.”
Menuhin then invited Shankar to New York, in 1955. As he could not make it, Shankar asked asked Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, his brother-in-law then, to go and perform with Chatur Lal. The two performed at some of the most prestigious venues, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Rockefeller Centre – venues that had not hosted Indian classical music before. There was even an appearance on Alistair Cooke’s Omnibus, the seven-time Emmy-winning show.
A pioneer in the field
In a press conference held in 2007 for a memorial concert for Chatur Lal organised by his Delhi-based son Charanjeet Chatur Lal and his family, Ustad Zakir Hussain said, “His (Chatur Lal’s) playing was unique and quite distinctive. I believe he travelled abroad with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in 1955. That might have been one of the earliest international tours by an Indian classical percussionist. In the Library of Congress in Washington DC, I also saw a 13mm film from that same tour where Chatur Lal ji is performing with jazz musicians… there is also a jugalbandi between him and a jazz drummer. It was incredible to witness his contribution – how he inspired musicians from other traditions to look towards India and Indian rhythm.”
When in New York, Shankar also realised that a western audience may be more comfortable with percussion sounds than the unique timbre and long concert style of the sitar. While he shortened his performances (bringing a raga from about three hours to 45 minutes), he also asked Chatur Lal to collaborate with other percussionists.
The result was a jugalbandi between him and jazz drummer Papa Jo Jones, a major influence in the swing era, perhaps the first ever fusion concert of its kind, which was later popularised by Hussain and John Mclaughlin in the form of their Indo-jazz outfit, Shakti. The fusion concert was telecast live. This made Chatur Lal an important conduit between Indian rhythm and jazz traditions.
Chatur Lal was also the first Indian percussionist to be nominated at the Oscars in 1957, along with Shankar for A Chairy Tale, a Canadian short film. The film won a Special BAFTA Award the same year. In 1962, he performed for Queen Elizabeth at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. She had missed his performance in London the previous year and asked the then-PM Jawaharlal Nehru for a meeting.
A life cut short
While at the peak of his career, Chatur Lal was admitted to Lady Irwin Hospital and, almost six months later, in October 1965, died of complications from jaundice. His son Charanjeet was eight then. He learned from Chatur Lal’s guru and set up a memorial society in his father’s memory, besides training his son Pranshu Chatur Lal to take the music forward.
