In India, it's rare to find women who are instrumentalists. It's even more unusual to find experimental female musicians. Well, Suphala is one of them. She's an Indian-American, who's based in New York City. The World's Marco Werman has more.

Suphala is one of those artists who can reside in the high and the low. She grew up studying classical piano. And then she switched to India's most prominent percussion instrument, the tabla. She can play it according to its strict musical guidelines. But she also works it into ultra modern chill out lounge music.

Suphala: "I'm from in Minneapolis, where Prince is from..."

MW: "You gotta say that..."

Suphala: "...Yeah, of course."

That reference to Prince provides one window into Suphala's musical mind. The other window looks onto a more traditional musical landscape. Each year, Suphala goes to India to stay close to those traditions. She typically goes toward the end of the year.

Suphala: "It's the music season, so all the maestros are playing, and I go and listen to as many concerts as I can, and I spend time with my teacher, and I get to practice with other students, and it's a totally different thing. So when I'm there, I'm immersed in that, and it gives me a source of inspiration as well to do other things."

In the states, Suphala often collaborates with a stylistic array of musicians: from singer songwriter Edie Brickell to guitarist Vernon Reid and remixer King Britt.

In India, she studied with two classical tabla masters, the late Ustad Allarahka and Zakir Hussein.

MW: "Most teachers of any subject, of any instrument, sort of see different things and qualities and potential in their students. What did Zakir Hussein see in you?"

Suphala: "Well, I think I just kept showing up. And I was coming to his concerts and I'd come for lessons. I started studying with his father I started with him. So it just became a nice special connection, they're very much like a family with their students and they'd teach something and I'd learn it. And it just kept going on and on."

Zakir Hussein is the ideal tabla guru for Suphala. He's also crossed the lines between traditional and modern, and merged the two. And he encourages Suphala to do the same in her own way and with appropriate improvisation. But maybe the most groundbreaking thing Suphala has pulled off in recent years was performing in Afghanistan.

She travelled there in January of 2005 for several days. She says it was a very heady week. And not just because she was the first female musician to perform in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. She also was the first artist to perform in a brand new theater in Kabul.

Suphala: "That concert I played was inaugurating that hall, so that's where it was. And there was a blizzard after fifteen years, and all kinds of interesting things during that week."

Suphala played a two part concert in that hall: one part was her fusion work on tabla. The other part was more traditional works performed with Afghan musicians, all men. Suphala sensed a little resistance among them. But that soon disappeared she says.

Suphala: "What I found out is that these tabla players were followers of my guru's style, so we were immediately able to talk tabla as opposed to anything else. So perhaps the gender thing was a surprise to them, we could immediately recite rhythms and it just got on that level and that plane, so it melted away."

That goes to show that Suphala applies improvisation to her life and her music. See how things go, and work from there. Her new CD "Blueprint" which was released yesterday echoes that belief. The recording is just an idea, and it's something we can continue to explore in many ways.