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The Elephant In The Baithak: Tabla And Audio Technological Discourse, Tyler Thom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how power, status, and performance practices play out between performers of tabla (North Indian hand drums) and audio engineers. To do so, I analyze engineer, performer, and music critic discourse surrounding tabla performances and technology to place it within a broader scholarly debate regarding recording technology, cultural/technological capital, technological determinism, and agency. I extend Christopher Scales’s (2012) concept of “recording culture” to “live sound culture,” or the behaviors, power struggles, and labor surrounding tabla mic’ing and amplification. I argue that audio technology separates the artist’s sound into several domains of control (stage, hall, recording, playback), each controlled …