Tabla player Zakir Hussain, during an interaction with The Hindu, in 2023 Photo credit: K. Murali Kumar
The tabla fell silent after one of the great global ambassadors of Indian classical music, Ustad Zakir Hussain (1951-2024), passed away on Monday (December 16, 2024) in San Francisco, California after a brief illness. A maestro who transformed an ordinary instrument into a powerful voice for global peace and humanity, Hussain’s incredible speed, dexterity, and creativity mesmerized audiences of all cultures.
The syncretic spirit of India echoed through Hussain’s rhythmic art, singing odes of Mata Saraswati, verses from the Holy Quran, and hymns from the Bible as a daily ritual. With a flair for carving out stories from percussive sounds, his conversational music resonated with a spark of spontaneity. A natural flow defined his music and personality. Padma Vibhushan will impress purists, captivate fusion seekers and hold Bollywood music fans in its creative space with equal delight. At the peak of his creative genius, he won three Grammys in one night this February.
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Like his carefully crafted free-flowing style, the versatile artist will execute complex rhythms, complex patterns, and subtle dynamics and then move on to objects like traffic signals and the sound of deer walking, without bracketing the music. In tune with technology, he used frequencies to highlight the subtle nuances of the instrument to establish that the tabla is not just a rhythmic instrument but also a melodious one. He appeared on the scene alongside renowned tabla artists like Anindo Chatterjee, Shafat Ahmed Khan, Kumar Bose, and Swapan Chaudhary, but Hussain’s role in popularizing tabla and giving it a global platform is unparalleled.
Born to Pandit Ravi Shankar’s renowned composer Ustad Alla Rakh, credited with taking tabla to foreign shores, tabla chose Hussain. He grew up in Mumbai in an environment where his father believed that every instrument has a soul. Hussain befriended the tabla at the age of three and as a teenager became a hit, the instrument became the music for his life and perhaps an extension of his personality. After watching him play, I could not see him playing tabla in classical music.
His other two brothers, Tawfiq and Fazal, are also renowned percussionists but Hussain took his father’s legacy to the next level by adding a touch of showmanship and expanding the wealth he inherited from the Punjab gharana. A keen learner and listener, Hussain was like a responsive satellite as a companion in class, shone like a star in his solos, and had a meteoric adventurous streak reserved for creating fusion music.
A child prodigy who gave his first professional performance at the age of 12, Hussain was not regimented by his teacher-father. Rooted in Indian tradition, he was allowed to develop wings and explore new frontiers. Her day would begin with devotional music invoking Hindu deities, polishing Koranic verses at a neighboring madrasa before joining morning prayers at the convent school. By 19, Hussain taught at the University of Washington before enrolling at Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s College of Music in San Francisco where he met his friend Antonia Minecola.
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Another chance meeting in New York led to a lifelong bond with legendary English guitarist John McLaughlin. Their friendship led to the formation of the groundbreaking Shakti Band in 1973 with violinist L. Shankar and percussionist TH Vinayakram combined Hindustani and Carnatic classical music with Western jazz influences. This year, Hussain teamed up with a new set of distinguished musicians and the band won the Grammy for Best Global Music.
Hussain’s desire to experiment led to rewarding collaborations with Irish singer Van Morrison, American percussionist Mickey Hart, Latin jazz percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, and Grateful Dread lead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia. He joined the electronic growth of Asian underground music in the 1990s but retained the natural acoustic quality of the tabla. He shared a special bond with santoor player Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, flute player Hariprasad Chaurasia and sarangi maestro Sultan Khan. Their juggling would begin as melodious banter and then turn into meditation. In sync with the next generation, last year, he composed a triple concerto for tabla, sitar and flute with Niladri Kumar and Rakesh Chaurasia, and his collaborations with Carnatic musicians extended to violinist Kala Ramnath and veenaist Jayanthi Kumaresh.
Fusion was never new to Hussain as he grew up hearing stories of how Amir Khusrau blended the Indian traditions of Dhrupad and Haveli music with Sufi Kaul to create Khyal. As a young composer, he watched his father and colleagues contribute to Hindi film music that was liberally drawn from various musical streams. Hussain felt like he was in cinema when he played the tabla for Laxmikant Paryelal’s first venture Parasamani. He later composed music for films like Ismail Merchant’s Muhafiz and Aparna Sen’s Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.
Hussain also had a habit of acting since childhood. It is said that Dilip Kumar recommended his name to K Asif for the role of young Salim in Mughal-e-Azam but Ustad Alla Rakha vetoed it. Later, he performed in Ismail Merchant’s Hit and Dust and Sai Paranjape’s Saaz. However, he became a household figure when he brought classical music into the mainstream by promoting a tea brand in an ad featuring him playing tabla at the iconic Taj Mahal. As an article in The Hindu described it, the combination of “”Wah Taj!”” Dashing young Hussain’s curly locks flying around his face as his fingers fluttered across the surface of his tabla – that charming smile echoing his playing – ensured brand immortality.
Fame has not dampened his humility and age has not dampened his curiosity. For Hussain, music was an endless journey. Every time someone tossed out the word perfection, he said, “I didn’t play well enough to quit.”
published – December 16, 2024 at 09:04 pm IST