Samta Prasad (1921-95) - percussion player in the Benares tradition Samta Prasad (often wrongly written as Shamta or Shanta) was a Tabla player (Drum pair of North Indian Classics (Hindustani)). The clarity, well-roundedness, and consistency of his strokes was a marvel to hear. It didn't seem to matter how quickly he played, one could always hear every single stroke as a distinct entity. Also known as Gudai Maharaj, Samta Prasad (1921-95) learned from Bikku Misra, and made a name for himself as a superb accompanist as much as a soloist. His style and repertoire are quite different from the Kanthe Maharaj silsila (although both Kanthe Maharaj and Bikku Misra learned from Baldeo Sahai (1872-c.1927) in the early decades of the 20th century. In his teental (or Tintal) rhythm (structure: clap, 2, 3, 4, clap, 2, 3, 4, wave, 2, 3, 4, clap, 2, 3, 4), Samta Prasad plays several compositions: if you would listen in particular for the very simple but highly effective panch-darje-ki-gat: it alternates triple and duple statements of what sounds like an identical pattern (but beware that these statements are not really identical). Listen examples: http://www.kippen.org/perf.html (Source: http://www.kippen.org/t_masters/samtaprasad.html ) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.