Music

ঢাকের বাদ্যি

Dhak, Dhol and Kansar

Bengal and Assam, medieval; players drawn from Bardhaman, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia and the 24 Parganas

Where it stands

Thriving

Gokul Chandra Das, North 24 Parganas, in 2025 the first dhaki ever awarded the Padma Shri; he has trained over 150 women as professional dhakis

Dhakis and their drums waiting to be hired in the forecourt of Sealdah station, Kolkata, days before Durga Puja 2011.Biswarup Ganguly, via Wikimedia Commons

The dhak is a barrel drum carved from mango or neem, slung high from the shoulder so it hangs against the player's chest, struck with two thin canes, and crowned with a spray of white feathers. It is worn that way for a reason, the dhaki has to dance. The dhol, smaller and played on both heads, stays low at the waist and keeps time; the kansar, a bell-metal plate, cuts the top. Together they are the puja orchestra, and what they play is not improvisation but liturgy, fixed patterns for the goddess's arrival, for the evening lamp, for sandhi puja, for the immersion. For four days a year, drummers who farm the rest of the year own the city's soundtrack.

ইতিহাস History

Where it came from

The dhak is a large barrel-to-cylindrical double-headed drum of Bengal and Assam, its shell carved from a single block of mango or neem, its heads of cowhide or goatskin laced on with cane or rope. It is far older than Durga Puja as a Kolkata festival and belongs to a wide eastern Indian layer of village worship — Manasa Puja, Sitala Puja, Gajan, Charak, Jagaddhatri, Kali Puja — where the dhak is the instrument that announces that a rite is happening.

There is no foundation date and no named inventor, which is normal for an instrument transmitted inside families rather than through schools. What can be traced is the migration pattern that the Kolkata festival created. As the baroyari and then sarbojanin puja spread through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, demand for dhakis concentrated into five days a year in a city where almost none of them lived. The result is an institution that is genuinely peculiar: an annual open-air labour market for a hereditary art, held on a railway platform.

The twentieth century added amplification and subtraction at once. Recorded dhak played over a PA undercut live players at budget pujas from the 1990s. At the same time the dhaki became a visual signature — two plumed drums flanking a pandal entrance — and large committees began hiring troupes for continuous ambient performance rather than for the ritual moments alone.

The single datable change in the craft's social structure is recent and precise. In 2010, the first troupe of women dhakis in Bengal — six women and four men, trained by Gokul Chandra Das of Maslandapur in North 24 Parganas — played their first Durga Puja.

A plumed dhak slung high on the player's chest at a south Kolkata pandal, white feather sprays and long fringes attached.Jonoikobangali, via Wikimedia Commons

সংস্কৃতি Culture

Who does it, and who used to

Dhakis come mostly from Bardhaman, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia, Bankura, Malda, Hooghly, Purulia, Medinipur and the 24 Parganas, and a large proportion belong to marginalised communities. The village of Koikirtan alone has over a hundred dhakis, most of them from the Rishi community, near the bottom of the caste hierarchy. For eleven months they farm, labour or pull rickshaws. For four or five days they are indispensable to a festival that could not begin without them.

The hiring is done on the platform. In the days before Puja, dhakis converge on Sealdah and Howrah stations with drums, bedding and cooking pots, and committee representatives walk the crowd, listen, negotiate and take them away. Photographs of the Sealdah dhaki bazaar — men squatting beside bundled drums under an Allahabad Bank hoarding — are among the most honest images the festival produces.

Gender was absolute until 2010. The dhak was held to be too heavy and the work too itinerant for women, and no woman played one professionally. Gokul Chandra Das broke that deliberately, training a mixed troupe and then, over fifteen years, more than 150 women as professional dhakis; he became the first dhaki ever awarded the Padma Shri, in 2025. Women dhakis are now a visible, if small, part of the Kolkata circuit and are paid the same rates.

Transmission remains familial. A boy learns the patterns by ear, standing next to his father.

Two musicians in a pandal with a kansar plate and a dhol, two plumed dhaks standing ready beside them.Sumita Roy Dutta, via Wikimedia Commons

তাৎপর্য Significance

Why this, and not something else

Puja drumming is liturgy, not atmosphere. The repertoire, called pujar badyo, is fixed and learned by ear, with distinct patterns for distinct ritual moments: the bodhon that announces the goddess's awakening, the arati bajna at the evening lamp offering, the specific pattern for sandhi puja at the junction of Ashtami and Nabami, the dhunuchi naach rhythm, the beat for sindur khela, and the bishorjon pattern for the immersion. A Bengali who knows the festival can tell from an adjacent street which rite is in progress. The dhak is how the ritual is broadcast.

The ensemble is hierarchical and the hierarchy is stated openly: the dhak leads, and the dhol and kansar follow it. The kansar, a struck bell-metal plate, and the conch and the women's ululation together make the sound-envelope of every consecrated moment, and the dhak sets its pulse.

There is also a physical argument. The dhak is slung high across the chest so that the player's legs and torso are free. A dhaki does not stand still; he dances while he plays, and in the immersion procession he leads the crowd through the street. The instrument is built for a moving body, and that is why it, rather than any seated drum, carries this festival.

A young dhaki at Dhakeshwari temple, Dhaka, the yellow-wrapped barrel drum slung from one shoulder and struck with two cane sticks.P.K.Niyogi, via Wikimedia Commons

কীভাবে How it is made

The work itself

The shell, the khol (খোল), is carved from a single block of mango or neem and can be two to three feet long. Both ends are covered with cowhide or goatskin, and the heads are laced to each other with cane or rope under high tension. The left head carries a tuning paste that weights it and gives the deeper sound. The instrument hangs from a shoulder strap so the barrel sits high in front of the chest. In Puja practice it is struck on one head only, with two thin, whippy cane sticks called kathi (কাঠি), held loose so that they bounce. The plumes — sprays of white feather and long hanging fringes — are tied to the shell and are not decoration only: they move with the player's body and make the rhythm visible at a distance. The dhol (ঢোল) is smaller, worn lower at the waist and played on both heads, with a stick in the right hand and the palm on the left. The kansar (কাঁসর) is a flat bell-metal plate struck with a short beater, sometimes with a ghonta (ঘণ্টা) handbell. A standard Puja group is two dhaks, one dhol and one kansar.

ঢাকdhak: The large shoulder-slung barrel drum, struck on one head with two cane sticks; the lead instrument of Durga Puja.
ঢোলdhol: The smaller two-headed drum worn at the waist and played with stick and palm; it accompanies, it does not lead.
কাঁসরkansar: A flat bell-metal plate struck with a beater, sounded at every consecrated moment alongside the conch.
ঢাকিdhaki: The dhak player, usually a seasonal migrant from rural Bengal.
কাঠিkathi: The two thin cane sticks used on the dhak, held loose so that they bounce off the head.
পুজোর বাদ্যpujar badyo: The fixed repertoire of ritual drum patterns, with a different beat for each moment of the rite.
বোধনbodhon: The awakening of the goddess, and the drum pattern that announces it.
খোলkhol: The drum shell, carved from a single block of mango or neem wood.

কাহিনি The stories

What people tell each other about it

The market on the platform

In the week before Durga Puja, dhakis from Bardhaman, Murshidabad, Birbhum, Nadia and the 24 Parganas travel to Kolkata and gather in the forecourts of Sealdah and Howrah stations with their drums, bedding and cooking vessels. Puja committee representatives walk among them, ask for a demonstration, negotiate a rate for five days and take a group away. Those who are not picked go home. Biswarup Ganguly photographed the Sealdah dhaki bazaar in October 2011: men standing beside bundled drums, the station behind them. It is one of the few open-air hiring fairs for a hereditary art anywhere in India.

Six women and four men, 2010

Until 2010 no woman in Bengal played the dhak professionally. The instrument was held to be too heavy, and the work — travelling, sleeping on platforms, playing through the night — was held to be unsuitable. Gokul Chandra Das of Maslandapur in North 24 Parganas trained a troupe of six women and four men, and they played their first Durga Puja that year. The resistance was substantial and local. Fifteen years later he has trained more than 150 women, who are booked on the same circuit and at the same rates, and his own group includes about thirty.

A Padma Shri for a drummer

In 2025 Gokul Chandra Das became the first dhaki in the history of the award to receive the Padma Shri. He had been playing since boyhood, had performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009 in an ensemble curated by Ravi Shankar, and had been praised by Zakir Hussain. The citation recognised performing arts. What made it notable in Bengal was less the music than the precedent: an instrument played almost entirely by men from marginalised rural castes, for a handful of days a year, at rates negotiated on a railway platform, had finally been counted as a career.

Koikirtan's hundred drummers

The village of Koikirtan has more than a hundred dhakis. Most belong to the Rishi community, which sits near the bottom of the Bengali caste hierarchy and whose traditional occupations were leatherwork and drum-making — the same hide that makes the drumhead. For four or five days each autumn its men are essential to a festival at which, in an earlier generation, they would not have been allowed to approach the deity. They play the bodhon that wakes her, the sandhi pattern at the most charged moment of the rite, and the beat that carries her to the river.

দেখুন Watch

আমাদের একটাই জাত - শিল্পী | Padma Shri Gokul Chandra Das | DhakKaahonKaahon's film on Gokul Chandra Das after his Padma Shri, in which he talks about caste and the dhaki's standing.

Gokul Chandra Das | Podcast Part 1 | Independent Language - Bols of DhakKaahonGokul Chandra Das on the bols of the dhak — the fixed ritual patterns treated as a language with its own grammar.

এখন Now

What state it is in

Highly visible, badly paid, and structurally unchanged. Demand is rising, including diaspora bookings that fly troupes to Britain and the United States, but earnings are compressed into four or five days and there is no off-season work in the craft. Most dhakis return to farm labour or rickshaw pulling. Recorded dhak on a PA system remains the cheapest option for a small committee and continues to take work from live players at the bottom of the market. Two things have improved. Women have entered the trade — Gokul Chandra Das has trained more than 150 — and are paid the same as men. And the profession acquired national recognition for the first time in 2025, when Das received the Padma Shri, the first dhaki ever to do so; he had earlier performed at the Hollywood Bowl in an ensemble curated by Ravi Shankar. Nothing has improved about the hiring. The Sealdah platform market still operates every autumn, rates are settled by negotiation on the spot, and a dhaki who is not picked goes home unpaid. Fusion work — dhak with tabla, drum kit and electronics — is now a standard Puja-stage genre and pays a handful of musicians well.

Sources for this page

BeforeআলপনাAlpona (Ritual Floor Art)After ধুনুচি নাচDhunuchi Naach