Most people's first experience of tabla is a mesmerizing blur of sound. And certainly the music of the tabla drums is both intricate and intense. It takes years to master playing even the basic sounds (bols) of tabla. Learning something about gats, kaydas, and relas, which are some of the traditional compositions of tabla, takes even more time. Learning to present all this knowledge, and learning advanced rhythmic concepts such as laykari (playing in multiple speeds against a single underlying tempo) takes even longer. And of course on top of all this an aspiring player must of course also develop their own feeling and individual style. Lucky then are those who are born to this instrument. Shri Deepayan is one of these players. Hailing from West Bengal he was apprenticed to tabla at an early age. His riyaz (practice) was quite rigorous, and often his guru made the young musician practice for up to twelve hours at a time.

Thus he learned the basics and advanced onto the art of accompaniment and the art of playing tabla as a solo instrument. His guru always reminded him that in a given rhythm the feeling of a particular taal should be respected. Tabla is capable of incredible elaboration and embellishment, and this it to be embraced, but only while also maintaining the groove.

A focus on keeping the groove would serve Deepayan well in his musical life. He eventually left India to work and play music in the USA. He met all kinds of musicians playing first with flamenco and Jazz musicians before experimenting with electronic musicans playing Trance, and Drum n' Bass.

He also took part in the Desi music scene in Seattle, which has many different groups groups playing everything from Bollywood to Classical Music. Incidentally it was a gig playing Classical tabla to accompany sarod for a showing of Rajput miniature paintings at the Seattle Art Museum that was his first gig with James Whetzel. Around this time he made some "electro khayal, " tracks which combined electronic sounds and beats with raw unadulerated Indian Classical music and tabla inspired rhythms. Also he worked on several remixes of Bhutanese music, Indian folk, and Bollywood and Bhangra.

Deepayan had done some work with DJs before and James invited him to perform at some club nights that he was involved in. They started to work together and played at nightclubs in Seattle such as Tost, The Mirabeau Room, and EMP. At this point Deepayan was playing live tabla over tracks. Music for dancing in nightclubs tends to be a bit louder than a sarodist or sitarist so playing tabla on top of these beats required some technical innovations. Deepayan came up with a way to adapt tabla to a western drum kit rack so that the tabla could not only be turned up louder, but be clearly seen above the heads of the dancers in the audience.

Inspired by performers such as DJ Soulsalaam and Frederic Galliano, Deepayan began DJing and playing live electronic music on laptop, and playing live tabla over his own music. This was surprising to some people who knew Deepayan as a musician only. In retrospect it seems obvious that a tabla player would be an excellent DJ. The precise sense of time required to play tabla trains one well to be an excellent beat matcher, and likewise to be quite creative when it come to scratching.

Deepayan and James started collaborating on their club sets. One person playing laptop or DJ-ing while the other played live music over the mix. They set up a night called Tandav, which was a collective project with DJ Advent, DJ Anup and DJ Gringo Starr. Eventually both DJ Advent and DJ Anup departed and Deepayan and James continued to produce the Tandav night for a year with DJ Gringo Starr.

n October 2005 the Tandav crew decided to put an end the Tandav club nights. It had been a successful run, but DJ Gringo Starr was moving to Brazil and both Deepayan and James wanted to spend more time making recordings. Each Tandav show had been a labor of love, for which innumerable remixes had been made, but all this preparation of remixes took alot of time and inhibited the completion of original tracks.

So began the era of Mean Deep. Deepayan and James worked to create new original music mixing everything they could play live with electronic beats and sounds. And the Funketabla record label was born.

They generated around 22 tracks, which they tested out at some private shows. One of these shows being a special performance in India in Deepayan's home town. In this time they perfected their performance set up, running two laptops, a set of DJ gear, tabla, darbouka, two dhols, sarod, and vocals. Of the 22 tracks, 8 were chosen to be polished up and finished for the Mean Deep album which will be released in 2007.

At the end of 2006 Deepayan moved to New York City. His time in Seattle had been wonderful to him, but the allure of the big apple proved impossible to resist. He is looking forward to getting involved in they dynamic music scene there.

And so what's next? In 2007 Deepayan and Mean Deep will be playing on the East Coast and touring the US and abroad. Mean Deep and Funketabla which were once only a West Coast U.S. phenomenon are going national and international, which given the broad international scope of the music, seems only natural.