ADDITIONAL INFO:
Jan Haag, a lifelong student of cultures and musical and artistic traditions, studied Indian Classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and Swapan Chaudhuri. Her unique combination of poetic, linguistic, and artistic talents allowed her to translate this most complex music, stitch by stitch, into the visual language of needlepoint pattern.

The design for these drum covers is based on the bols for a "Kaida in Tintal" -- transposed into visual pattern. Each square in the central pattern represents a beat. There are sixteen beats to a line. Each color, the shade of each color, the design, and the direction of each stitch in these tabla covers are "coded" with meaning.