Tony Ramasar

Tony Ramasar one of Trinidad and Tobago's elite tabla players, comes from Pasea, Tunapuna. At a very young age Tony found himself surrounded by his grandmother's dholak and her traditional singing. Since he lost his mother Samrattie Ramasar at the age of three, he grew much closer to his grandmother Parandaye Ramasar. For several years, as a child growing up, Tony could be found in the company of the ladies group playing dholak, which was led by his grandmother. This went on for several years until the age of twelve, when his father Tommy Ramasar brought home a pair of Tabla. A year later after fooling around with the tabla, Tony met his first Guru, Professor Sudhir Verma, of Lucknow, India, who was teaching in Trinidad at the time. For the next two years, he excelled in his studies of the instrument. His guru at the time, seeing the natural talent in this young man became very fond of him and had him at his house every day practicing for hours at a time. After Tony ventured out into the public playing tabla he became a member of the BWIA National Indian Orchestra after which he played with most of the prominent bands at the time. At age seventeen, he accompanied Shri Hari Om Sharan for the first time in Trinidad at the very first Diwali Nagar Programme. By this time, he had already toured in Canada, England and the US. Tony then migrated to Canada, where he received tremendous exposure to the Indian community accompanying top artistes like Chandan Das, Talat Aziz, Krishnamurthy Brothers, Ustad Mehdi Hassan, Anup Jalota, Sudhir Narain, Irshad Khan, Khalid Saleem and Ghulam Ali. Presently he resides in Florida, USA where he continues to learn from his present guru, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. He performs in over seventy-five concerts per year throughout North America. Tony has now accompanied Anup Jalota in over eighty concerts. Tony Ramasar prides himself as always being a student of tabla, hence why he keeps learning and working so hard with the intention of becoming an even better tabla player. (Copyright Hindisongstt 2023)