Rhythm as biology, as physics, as intergenerational intelligence—and as a civilizational constant.
In the arc of Shehrezad Faruk Czar’s intellectual life, music did not enter as an art form to be acquired, nor as a performance skill to be mastered. It entered much earlier, and far more quietly, as a compulsion. Long before formal training, long before language, notation, or discipline, rhythm asserted itself as instinct.
As a child, rhythm found expression wherever surfaces existed. Car dashboards during long and short journeys became instruments. Beats emerged unconsciously, without instruction, without audience, without intention. The hands moved not to perform, but to respond. There was no concept of tala, no awareness of gharana, no idea of mastery. There was only repetition, variation, anticipation, and release-rhythm as a natural extension of cognition.
This early relationship with tabla was not educational; it was neurological. Rhythm preceded explanation. Pattern preceded theory. In retrospect, this distinction matters deeply, because it reveals something essential about music itself: that rhythm is not learned first as culture, but as biology.
For decades, tabla remained present but informal. It was not pursued professionally, nor framed as vocation. It existed in parallel with medicine, economics, physics, and intellectual work-as a constant background signal rather than a foreground pursuit. Then, in 2012, something changed. Formal training began-not as technique, but as language.
Under the guidance of masters, tabla was introduced not merely as an instrument, but as a structured linguistic system. Bols were no longer sounds alone; they were syntax. Cycles were no longer repetitions; they were grammar. Composition became narrative. Improvisation became speech. Rhythm revealed itself as a codified intelligence, capable of encoding time, tension, resolution, and emotion with mathematical precision.
This revelation was transformative. What had once been instinctive now acquired structure without losing its essence. Tabla ceased to be an isolated art and instead aligned itself with broader intellectual frameworks: linguistics, mathematics, physics, and neurobiology. Rhythm was no longer merely felt; it was understood.
Yet the most profound manifestation of this musical intelligence did not occur through personal performance. It emerged through inheritance.
When his two sons began playing tabla, what unfolded was not ordinary musical progression. They did not merely learn; they absorbed. Their relationship with rhythm mirrored his own early compulsion, but with an intensity and clarity that surpassed expectation. Without force, without spectacle, they advanced at a pace that defied conventional developmental timelines.
They soon emerged as the youngest tabla players in the world, followed by multiple national awards and recognition. Their nomination for the Pride of Performance, Pakistan’s highest civilian honor, marked a historic moment-not simply for achievement, but for lineage. Talent had not only transmitted; it had amplified.
This phenomenon reframed tabla yet again-not as individual expression, but as intergenerational intelligence. Rhythm revealed itself as something that could be inherited, refined, and accelerated when environmental coherence, neurological predisposition, and disciplined exposure aligned.
This is where music transitions into physics. A percussion instrument like the tabla is fundamentally an acoustic system. It operates through vibration, resonance, tension, frequency, and decay. Every stroke produces a waveform. Every composition is an orchestration of vibrational events across time. What musicians experience intuitively, physics can measure precisely.
Sound is vibration. Vibration is energy. Energy is information.
This understanding led naturally into the formulation of CUVT - Czar Unified Vibrational Theory. CUVT does not emerge from ancient scripture, mysticism, or metaphysical borrowing. It is not retrofitted philosophy. It is grounded in measurable acoustics, mathematical consistency, biological response, and physical law.
CUVT proposes that vibration is not a secondary phenomenon in the universe, but a primary organizing principle. Matter, energy, cognition, and biology are expressions of vibrational states interacting across scales. Sound is not symbolic-it is structural.
Tabla becomes a living demonstration of this principle. Each stroke produces a vibration that interacts with air, surfaces, human auditory systems, and neural pathways. The human body responds hormonally, neurologically, and psychologically. Heart rate shifts. Cortisol modulates. Dopamine and serotonin fluctuate. Rhythm entrains physiology. This is not metaphor; it is endocrine biochemistry in motion.
As an endocrine biochemist, this interaction is impossible to ignore. Rhythm influences insulin sensitivity, stress response, neuroplasticity, and metabolic regulation. Music is not entertainment layered onto biology; it is biological input.
This is why rhythm has such a powerful impact on psychology. It regulates attention, stabilizes emotion, reinforces memory, and creates coherence within the nervous system. In group contexts, rhythm synchronizes populations. It aligns individuals into collective states of focus and identity. Economies, armies, rituals, and civilizations have always used rhythm-not by accident, but by necessity.
From this perspective, music becomes one of the few human phenomena capable of summating civilization. Language divides. Visual art localizes. Text requires translation. Music does none of these. Rhythm precedes language. It crosses cultures without negotiation. It binds biology before ideology. In this sense, music is not merely a cultural artifact-it is a civilizational constant.
CUVT extends this insight further. If the universe is structured vibrationally, then sound is not an emergent byproduct of matter. Matter is a stabilized expression of vibration. This aligns with modern physics, where particles are described as excitations of underlying fields. It aligns with neuroscience, where cognition emerges from oscillatory brain activity. It aligns with endocrinology, where hormonal rhythms regulate physiological states.
Music, particularly percussion, sits at the intersection of these domains. It is physics made audible. Mathematics made temporal. Biology made expressive.
This is why tabla occupies such a central role in his intellectual landscape. It is not because of performance or prestige, but because tabla represents pure rhythm-unmediated by harmony or melody. It exposes time itself as structure.
The emergence of his sons as tabla prodigies reinforces this framework. It demonstrates that vibrational intelligence is not merely learned, but transmissible when environment, discipline, and biological predisposition align. It suggests that genius may not always be created through instruction, but through coherent exposure.
In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, this insight becomes critical. AI operates on patterns, frequencies, oscillations, and signals. It is, at its core, a vibrational system- processing information through weighted resonance. The same principles that govern rhythm in music govern intelligence in machines.
CUVT therefore becomes a bridge: between physics and music, between biology and cognition, between human intelligence and artificial systems.
There is a reason civilizations have always turned to music at moments of transition. When language fails, rhythm remains. When ideologies fragment, sound unifies. When systems collapse, music preserves coherence. It is the one human creation that can carry emotion, memory, structure, and meaning simultaneously.
In this light, the journey from childhood dashboard rhythms to intergenerational mastery is not incidental. It is evidence of a deeper continuity: that sound is not something humans invented, but something they recognized. If the universe is vibrational, then music is not art added to existence. It is existence recognizing itself.
And among all instruments, tabla-precise, mathematical, bodily-remains one of the clearest mirrors of that truth.