A son was born in 1903 at a village called Naal, near Bikaner, Rajasthan to Ustad Nobi Bukhsh, Music Director of Musicals. His first tabla performance was at the age of six, after which he continued to work as a child artist with the Jodhpur-Bikaner Theatre Company (J B Theatre Co.) and the Albert Theatre Company at Lahore. The Nawab of Junagadh presented him with a golden sword when he was 13, for the singing portrayal of a prince, prophesying he would grow up to be one of India's great artists. He went on to specialize in the field of percussion, commanding the highest pay any musician did during the 20s and early 30s (he was paid one rupee and 50 paise per recording when the staple was 50 paise) for recordings that were played as a backdrop to silent movies. He continued his work in theatre alongside this to become the Chief Dance Director and Chief Director of Musicals. It was with the talkies, however, that Ghulam Mohammed fulfilled the Nawab's prophecy.
Played a part in this fulfillment is his fast-paced composition of Ghalib's somber Dil-e-Nadaan for Sohrab Modi's Mirza Ghalib (1954) and his presenting of La De Mohe Balma Aaasmani Churiya in a format akin to Rap, long before Rap was popular in the west even, in Rail Ka Dibba (1943). But his being the original music composer for Pakeezah (1972) (Naushad took over towards the end because he passed away during the making of the film), has placed him securely in the Indian music director's hall of fame. He is credited with introducing to Hindi film music instruments like the duff, matka, chimta, kharkaal, manjeere and lota. His family's claim to him introducing the dholak to Hindi film music with Sharda (1942) is contested by the Sen family (descendants of percussionist Jamal Sen). But there is no contesting him being the first ever person to have recorded the dholak in a recording of Begum Inaayati Dera Waali's in 1934. His six sons (each a musician in his own right) have grown adept at the instrument too, prompting Pyarelal Sharma of Laxmikant-Pyarelal to call their family the 'dholak gharana'.
"Begum Inayaati rejected many tabalchis because they couldn't give her the rhythm she wanted for her recording," recounts Mumtaz Ahmed, the eldest of his sons. "She was skeptical about my father playing the dholak, an instrument used only in mujras, instead of the tabla." Ghulam Mohammed had been invited to a wedding in Jammu by U*ma Dutt (Shiv Kumar Sharma's father) where he had seen many women playing dholaks to perfection because one woman kept rhythm by tapping a small stone to the ground. To discipline the dholak in similarly to match the precision of a tabla, he thought, one should use the challa (the metal ring seen on every tabalchi's fore-finger***). "But the dholak was a different kind of drum altogether," Mumtaz explains. "So he decided that the challa should be placed on the dholak player's little finger. Where it has remained ever since…"
The idea of using the matka, in Sharda (1942), stemmed similarly, from Ghulam Mohammed's wanderings through festival celebrations in Punjab and Multan. "He suggested to Naushad that a soft rounded sound would match Suraiya's 14 year old voice," says Aziz Mohammed, the second eldest brother and an acclaimed percussionist within the industry. "And he knew exactly where to find it." Ghulam Mohammed's unabashed use of rough un-engineered musical instruments in carefully crafted compositions took a new turn when he was music director himself. "He introduced the khanjari, chimta, kharkaal, manjeere and lota (only a small brass pot) all at once in Doli (1943) which composed the music for," remembers Mumtaz. "It was a riot." Literally, and figuratively.
Mumtaz, while experimenting with acting, directing and production work, has remained faithful to music, his dedication culminating in his work as instructor at the Indian Music School in Dubai. Having produced a musical called Tamanna, his dream now "is to produce a film some day, where all of us brothers compose the music together." Aziz, a talented tabalchi from a young age, was egged on into the field by both his father and his uncle Abdul Kareem, another tabla legend (his solo recital makes Madhuban Mein Radhika Naache Re in Kohinoor come alive even today). His hands have hammered away since at both the tabla and the dholak to sculpt famous melodies for famous films like Aaina (1977 – where he's done a solo), Leader, Sangharsh and many more. Mohammed Iqbal, whose heart lies with the congo and the tumba, has served as an essential aide to popular Qawwal voices Aziz Nazan (Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom Sharaabi) and Altaf Raja (Tum to Thehre Pardesi). He and brother Masood Mohammad have jointly released an album Paigaam and are currently working currently on their second release. Yusuf Mohammed, like Aziz, is an industry favourite, and his expertise with the dholak and tabla has led him to work with popular music directors Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and more recently, Anu Malik and Aadesh Shrivastav. Khalique Ahmed, on the other hand, has taken his percussion skills live with shows for banners like Percept and Sahara. He's currently touring Europe with an Indian music show called Bharti, and his dholak and tabla as hand baggage. The brothers are particularly proud of Javed, Mumtaz's son, "whose left hand on the tabla is exactly like that of our chachajaan (Abdul Kareem)". But some of their sons have taken to other fields – in business and service.
Their discontent at this is complementary to their discontent at the way Hindi film music is created today. "I don't want to sound pessimistic, because we have excellent music directors even today," says Aziz. "And I'm not against westernization of music either. But the method has gone awry." His brothers join in to lay down their contentions. Synthesized sound is in, they say, so even string, wind, and percussion instrument sounds are strummed out on the keyboard, which can never have the same effect. "At earlier recordings musicians were required to play an entire song together," recounts Mumtaz. "There was live interaction among the musicians, through their sounds, which made magic that resonated in the recording." With recording studios being too expensive today, each musician is recorded separately, and their sounds are assembled technologically. "This often results in a musician not knowing what he's playing for," says Iqbal. "We are told the general mood, but the complexities a musician used to work with earlier are left out. Is our piece a sawaal (question), a jawaab (answer) or a paradox? Where do we fit in?" As if to better voice this, in a language only they understand, the brothers settle down for our photoshoot, with musical instruments that their father presented to them as he did to the world and play out their sawaals, their jawaabs and their paradoxes.
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