Museum of Tanpura

In the early 1980s, her very first camera in hand, Dayanita Singh traveled throughout India for six winters with the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. At his side, she had the privilege of photographing several great classical musicians, creating an extensive image archive of them on stage and backstage, in their homes and on the faithful bus which brought them from concert to concert. When the time came for Singh to edit her work into a book, she chose to focus on the tanpura, a long-necked, four-stringed drone instrument which evokes and supports a musician’s voice, both during performance and the process of daily practice riyaz. Museum of Tanpura celebrates the tanpura as a musician’s constant companion, the environments and relationships which bring music into being, and embodies what Singh sees as her greatest learning from all the performers she befriended—the rigor and aesthetics of riyaz.