Badal Roy was a pioneering Indian tabla player who played with jazz legends Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman.
Badal Roy (born Amarenda Roy Chowdhury) moved from East Pakistan to New York City in 1968 to work on a PhD program in statistics.
He learned tabla from an uncle and had taken lessons from renowned tabla player Alla Rakha. He was playing tabla in a restaurant in New York when he was noticed by jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin.
That meeting led to Roy playing tabla at the Village Gate in front of Miles Davis. Davis asked Roy to be a member of his band and he recorded three albums with the jazz legend.
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