Tabla & Santoor

So tonight i finally made it out to see some traditional/classical Indian music.
The show was on an outdoor stage in Nehru Park, which is in Chanakyapuri (the government heavy area of town) right across from embassy row. Which is, from what I've seen, probably the it's the nicest part of Delhi. I was sitting on the grass in front of some diplomat looking people who had some military style guards. I was gonna get a pic, but my camera died. I think taking video really eats through the battery.
On the bill was Pt.Shivkumar Sharma (Santoor) and Us. Zakir Hussain (Tabla). Tabla is the standard Indian pair of drums- a smaller bongo style drum and a slightly larger drum with a flexible membrane that the players often use to make sort of a "water drop" change in pitch. The santoor is basically a hammer dulcimer with 100 stings.
The guy playing the hammer dulcimer was pretty awesome looking, white hair in sort of a fro. Not standard practice here. somewhere between gene wylder, dr who, bob dylan and , uh, boris yeltsin. but indian. He had a habit of throwing his head back in half surprise with an open mouthed smile. Sometimes i could tell what he was interested in, other times it was completely lost on me.

I was only there for an hour and half. little late getting away from work, and then the desire to eat led to an early departure, but i got to see them rip through some ragas. Often staring out slow, then taking a few solos and finishing off in a frenzy or some more synchronized sections.

It was interesting to observe the communication between the players, which was pretty frequent. While the santoor was beautiful and really seemed to be the focus, the tabla playing was objectively amazing. I have no idea how he compares with other players, but he was extremely fast and he varied it enough to really kept it interesting. What he was playing basically didn't seem possible. And since was right in front of a huge speaker when the tabla went low the bass was practically gastro-status altering.

Here are vids of another show these 2 have done together. pretty similar to what i saw. i'll say it again: youtube is amazing.

pt. 1 pt. 2

update:
After talking to people at the office about the show it seems that these 2 are very highly regarded musicians and among the best in the world (if not the best) at their respective instruments. so it's all downhill from here. 2 things other things i also wanted to mention about the show: it was free (except for the plane fare from U.S., which i guess i didn't pay either) and, according to people at work, this type of happening is called a jugalbandi (jug band? he-haw anyone?). Which was explained to me as a duo of tradionally solo instrument possibly from different classical traditions.