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 Rimpa Siva
Few Indian musicians have created as much excitement and discussion in recent times as Rimpa Siva. Those who have been fortunate enough to witness her live performances have been stunned by her virtuosity and her awareness of the traditions that feed into the modern repertoire of tabla playing. Her story is remarkable by any stretch of the imagination. At the age of fourteen she had already accompanied many of the contemporary celebrities of Indian Classical music including Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia and Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty in sell out tours of the USA and Europe. The breathe-taking power, precision and speed exhibited in her solo tabla playing has challenged many preconceptions about the role of women in the world of tabla playing.
Throughout her short career her guide and inspiration has been her father Prof. Swapan Siva, an eminent teacher of the Farukhabad gharana. As a young child she would look on studiously while her father gave tabla lessons to his male disciples. Since girls are hardly ever initiated into learning the tabla, Rimpa’s father didn’t concern himself about it too much at first. Rimpa however was mesmerized by the sounds of the drums and started dabbling with it from the age of three. It was when she was about nine that her father noticed Rimpa had mastered certain aspects of the instrument which people usually get to only around 16-17 years of age and realized he had real talent on his hands.
Rimpa’s solo tabla performances have taken her to all corners of her native India and beyond. Travelling to Norway in 1996, at the age of ten, she was awarded the Arun Land Rej Memorial Fund for her performance, which included a cash award of fifty thousand rupees. In June 1997, she was invited to the Netherlands to participate in the World Child Festival. In 1998 a documentary film titled ‘Rimpa Siva: Princess of Tabla’ was made in France to honour this child prodigy. Rimpa's music was given a tinge of fusion by Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia at the New Millennium year programme for Indian National TV.
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