Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

To an Unknown God: The Tabla and the Prologue to the Gospel of John

Scott Robinson, Eastern University

In this program, my composition, “No Hands But Yours, for Tabla, Western Percussion and Cantor,” serves as a metaphor for the incarnational theology of the Prologue to the Gospel of John. Compositions on the tabla, or North Indian hand drums, are traditionally taught through the use of bols—spoken syllables that correspond to the various drumstrokes. My piece is in the form of a theme-and-variations genre known as a kaida, and each variation is performed three times: once in the form of bols, once on the tabla themselves, and once on a battery of Western percussion. The bols represent the transcendent Logos, the Word through which all things were made, while the same music performed on the tabla represents the Christos, the “Word made flesh.” Finally, the same music, realized on the Western percussion instruments, corresponds to the Ekklesia, the gathered community of the faithful in which each member plays a distinct part. In this program, I perform the piece to a recorded track of the Western percussion and cantor.

The presentation includes an introduction to cyclical time in Indian music, and to the kaida form in particular.Then, beginning with Paul’s address on Mars Hill in Acts 17, in which he speaks of the Athenian shrine “to an Unknown God,” I explore how all faiths and cultures can direct us toward the one “God who made heaven and earth.”