In­nis Fran­cis

With earnest at­ten­tion, it is no co­in­ci­dence that one’s gift to­day can be traced back to the ori­gins of in­her­i­tance.

Four gen­er­a­tions lat­er, Tara­dath Sawh, 46, takes pride in the har­mo­nious melodies he cre­ates on the tabla and dhol, in­stru­ments he learned to play from his fa­ther, fu­elled by a child­hood love of beat­ing any­thing that made a sound.

Sawh said his fore­par­ents’ lega­cy was well doc­u­ment­ed through arte­facts he and his sib­lings dis­cov­ered af­ter his fa­ther’s pass­ing.

He re­mem­bers, as a child, beat­ing any­thing that could pro­duce a melody and how of­ten he got in­to trou­ble for it. Both his fa­ther, Bood­han Sawh, and his late aunt, De­opathe Sawh, recog­nised his pas­sion for per­cus­sion mu­sic and de­cid­ed to nur­ture it. His fa­ther taught him to play the tas­sa, while his aunt gift­ed him his first tabla when he was 11 years old.

Over the years, the Gas­par­il­lo man honed his craft through self-teach­ing and earned the re­spect of many for his mas­tery of the in­stru­ments. He has a daugh­ter who, un­like him, is drawn to the art of dance.

He de­scribed be­com­ing a ver­sa­tile tabla and dhol play­er as no easy feat, ex­plain­ing that he chal­lenged him­self to learn and im­prove with every pass­ing day.

Dur­ing his teenage years, he played the in­stru­ments sim­ply be­cause he loved them. How­ev­er, he felt he should not on­ly be able to play and en­ter­tain but al­so un­der­stand the mu­sic he was per­form­ing. As a re­sult, he en­rolled in the Bharatiya Vidya Sansthaan pro­gramme at San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School when he was 13 years old to learn Hin­di and de­vel­op a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the mu­sic.

So ac­com­plished has he be­come in the art form that he is now a part-man­ag­er and mem­ber of the Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­tra­or­di­naires, a band he has been part of since 2018. The group has se­cured a place on the must-have en­ter­tain­ment list for wed­dings, par­ties and most CPL match­es held at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my.

Sawh con­tin­ues to make a name for him­self with the band while se­cur­ing book­ings and per­for­mances across the is­lands. Dur­ing his trav­els to pro­mote the art form, he was gift­ed a Tabo­lak, de­scribed as the first of its kind in the Caribbean, by a fam­i­ly friend from Dy­lam Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

Sawh said he was “high­ly ap­pre­cia­tive” of the in­stru­ment, which is care­ful­ly craft­ed from shee­sham wood im­port­ed from In­dia. He said it makes trans­porta­tion eas­i­er and al­lows for in­ter­change­able beats and arrange­ments dur­ing his per­for­mances.

A firm be­liev­er in the Most High, he said that when he re­ceived the in­stru­ment, he first played the Tabo­lak at a tem­ple func­tion to re­ceive di­vine bless­ings.

“I am re­al­ly hap­py to re­ceive the Tabo­lak. The per­son who gift­ed me said he knows of my ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and from the mo­ment he saw it, he said I must be the first to own it in Trinidad. It is a hy­brid of the two in­stru­ments which are usu­al­ly sep­a­rate. This one can be in­ter­changed. Rather than switch be­tween in­stru­ments, this one is two-in-one and more ver­sa­tile and can fuse the songs in­to one,” he said.

Sawh has al­so shared the stage with sev­er­al promi­nent names in the in­dus­try, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, in­clud­ing Sud­hir Nar­ine from In­dia, Nan­di­ni Sha­ran, Dr Shiv­anand Ma­haraj, Neval Chate­lal, the Kaweesh D Band and Joshua Re­grel­lo.

He said he nev­er un­der­stood why he had such a pas­sion for cre­at­ing mu­sic by beat­ing things, but now sees it as a gen­er­a­tional gift and a form of “stress re­liev­er”.

He said most of his fam­i­ly mem­bers even­tu­al­ly recog­nised his pas­sion and tal­ent and would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly book him to per­form at fam­i­ly func­tions.

“I do it out of the good­ness of my heart; my fam­i­ly wants to en­cour­age me on. Our band al­so un­der­stand the art of play­ing and the au­di­ences we play for. We don’t just stand and play; we read the crowd. We get in­volved with the au­di­ence. We some­times go down to the ground with them, and they love that. We al­ways bring the vibe. So we are not like the typ­i­cal tas­sa band; our per­for­mance is dif­fer­ent,” Sawh said.

He said the mem­bers were so close that if one of them was un­able to at­tend a booked event, an­oth­er could step in to fill the gap with­out mak­ing the per­for­mance seem in­com­plete.

Sawh said he was look­ing for­ward to per­form­ing on the open­ing night of the 2026 Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas.