Ustaad Zakir Hussain, one of the world’s greatest tabla players and pioneer of Indian classical music, died last month. He was a revolutionary in music that transcended borders, playing with jazz, rock and traditional artists across the globe, eventually settling in California and establishing the fusion group Tabla Beat Science. He also wrote a number of film scores, and acted in a few as well.
Dennis McNally, author, historian, music publicist, and friend to Hussain, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share about life and legacy of Ustaad Zakir Hussain. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: Thank you for being here, and sorry for your loss.
Dennis McNally: It has been even, you know, frankly, more difficult to overcome than I would ever anticipated, partly because his death was a heart attack. We knew he had some problems, but I thought he was doing well. And at any rate, it came as a surprise, a shock.
Zakir had an absolutely universal vision of music. It wasn’t just jazz and classical. Tabla Beat Science was electronica. He recorded with a bunch of Celtic musicians. And it’s just he was, well, in addition to being an absolute musical genius and I think one of the truly great musicians ever.
He was also incredibly kind and good-natured and and generous. My wife and I got to travel with him in India a few years back. And I mean, it was as though we were family. He’s an exceptional human being and I miss him.
Rath: I am grieving along with you. Not just as a lover of music. I know that I’m [also] speaking for a lot of first-generation Indian and Pakistanis who have grown up in countries outside of South Asia. For people like us, the music that Zakir Hussain pioneered — hybrid, multicultural, multi-ethnic — this was our music.
McNally: Absolutely. There’s a giant portrait of musicians, you know, a mural in the entrance hall of the international terminal in Mumbai Airport — and his portrait is like twice as big as everybody else’s, which reflects some acknowledgment because Ravi Shankar and Zakir’s father, Alla Rakha, largely introduced Indian classical music to America, first at the Monterey Pop Festival and again at Woodstock through touring.
But Zakir took it to the next level by far by introducing Indian music into other realms. As you say, he and Mickey Hart collaborated on something called Planet Drum, which got the first Grammy for international music. He worked with Charles Lloyd in a band called Sangam. He worked with Dave Holland, who was Miles Davis’ bass player in a group called Crosscurrents with Chris Potter. It just, you know, he was the guy. ... the great fusion band of all time, which was Shakti that here and Vikku [Vinayakram] and Shankar and John McLaughlin and that was, you know, incredible, incredible music. And, you know, lots more.
I was supposed to be his publicist, and I acted as that for quite a long time. But he was constantly up to stuff that I didn’t even know about and they would sort of pop up, “Yes, we’re doing this now.” He was truly exceptional, and that’s all I could say.
Rath: What’s incredible is all the things that you listed out — and, you know, certainly like leaving out things as well — to be so firmly established in the intense world of Indian classical music and so connected with it at the same time. You mentioned his father, Alla Rakha ... they’d play these concerts together towards the end of his life, which were just incredible father and son concerts. I remember seeing them as a young man and [it was] just unbelievable.
McNally: I got to see it once on Alla Rakha’s 70th birthday. Mickey Hart threw a party and I got to go. And it was actually Zakir and his father and his brother ... but I could be wrong. At any rate, it’s just drum heaven.
Rath: I want to make sure we hear some some of the amazing music. And one thing I want to play an example of first, because it’s fascinating how he even pushed boundaries and introduced new elements in classical music. I want to play an example here where he’s using the bass drum, the bass tabla to play a melody.
McNally: In addition, everything else, he had a fabulous sense of humor. And would he go into what he called what we teasingly called “Zakir Hussain Comedy Hour.” And he’d start telling a story.
Rath: He was so funny.
McNally: It’s very funny. Very funny. And he would tell it. I think he did this a bit more in India than in his American performances. I think he felt he could get looser or something, but he’d he tell a story about, “an elephant’s going along the road [drum sound] Then it comes up to a car [drum sound] and it would just go on and it would get funnier and plenty more. And everything that he said was replicated with the tabla. And, you know, it was like as I say, it was it was hilarious, but it was also just remarkable. That’s all I could say.
I’ve been in the music business now for 45 years. I heard a lot of shows of brilliant, brilliant musicians. The most amazing performance I ever saw was Zakir solo with a harmonium, but otherwise solo, indoors. It was a benefit for a music school. As we walked in there with these two young adolescent boys sitting behind me and I was like sort of grumbling to myself that they were going to, like, fidget and bother me. And instead, Zakir started and the entire room — I swear this is true — the entire room fell silent and motionless. And for 90 minutes, Zakir Hussain put on the drum solo of all time.
And in the elevator back to the hotel, as he was going up to his room, I said to him, ”What the heck just happened?“ And his eyes were spinning. He knew he’d gone some far place and he just looked at me and he said, ”Well, a lot of the people that were here tonight were here last night, and I knew I had to change things up a little.“ It was absolutely transcendent.
