Are the responsibilities of the mridangam player the same as those of the tabla player?
No, there are major differences between the duties of the mridangam player and the tabla player. The tabla player’s primary duty is that of timekeeper. It is the tabla a player’s job to keep the whole performance together. The mridangam player is generally not the timekeeper. In a typical performance, the main musician, as well as half the first row of the audience, will be there to keep the tal. This frees the mridangam player to explore elaborations that a tabla player is generally not free to do.
