The Bewildering Spirit and Charisma of Zakir Hussain

Altadena (California): I was immersed in the music of the legends, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Alla Rakha, among others. These sounds had been ringing through my ears since the age of 12 along with the psychedelic soundtrack of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. I was fifteen years old and had completed my first year of studying sitar and tabla in the beautiful hill station of Mussoorie at Woodstock School, then in Uttar Pradesh, North India.

I felt like the happiest kid in the world, playing the exciting music that I had fallen so in love with as a kid and trying not to get too distracted by all the cute Indian girls. I walked up the mountainside daily from the dorm to the school watching monkeys in the trees above my head. It was here that I first put my hands on the goat skins of a worn tabla set and played my first ‘Dha’, and plucked out my first ‘sargam’ in Raga Yaman. Snuggled into the grand vistas and pristine air of the Himalayas, I was in the footsteps of my heroes, just a handful of kilometres from Rishikesh, where John, Paul George and Ringo had landed almost 20 years earlier. Like the Fab Four, I was on my spiritual journey in these majestic mountains, pursuing this ancient and rigorous path of musical transcendence. The raga music and the captivating language of tabla had me hooked and I knew even then there was no turning back.

I was primed but certainly not prepared for what I was to experience one special night in Delhi at a concert of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and Ustad Zakir Hussain in 1985. The music just melted my mind with its elegance and rhythmic finesse. The santoor and tabla were united in an effusion of dynamic energy, ebbing and flowing through what seemed like an endless outpouring of cascading improvisations. I was enthralled and realized that day that telepathic communication was possible through music. It confirmed in me the thought that I still carry through into my studies of dhrupad today, and keeps me continually humble, that this music is a vehicle of bewilderment, in the best possible sense. Like Socrates, I discovered, “The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.”

Forty years later, having listened to Zakir Hussain in countless concerts and on hundreds of records, it’s undeniable that he possessed some rare musical clairvoyance. He wielded a prescience that enabled him to know what the other musicians would do. Of course, this added tremendously to the depth of feeling in the art and confirmation that music is truly a listening art. This profound intuition taught us a beautiful lesson: to allow the music to unfold in a natural, organic way grounded in a deep trust in life, a faith in things unseen. From a pulpit of music, a prophet of the gospel of rhythm was emerging triumphant on the global stage and when Zakirji played, whether you understood anything or not, you became a believer!  

As creative artists, we must do three things– study and cultivate the depth, feeling and science of a chosen tradition and lineage; listen deeply to others who are innovating and pushing beyond musical boundaries; and finally, be ourselves, and find our voice.

Perhaps this was the spiritual calling that Zakir embodied. He took the best from his father and the incredible legacy of the Punjab gharana of tabla. Then he built upon that intricate language, immersing himself in the rhythms of Africa, Latin America, and Jazz until he became a musician who moved completely beyond any limitation of tradition, genre, or style. Here was a self-realized artist. I feel that Zakir found his calling, much like our American musical prophets, Saint John Coltrane and his wife Swamini Alice ‘Turiya-Sangit-Ananda’ Coltrane, on a similarly rigorous cycle of search, discovery and revelation only to return to the beginning again. Like many before him, Zakir seemed to be on this universal path which required complete integrity and self-emptying to maintain humility and creativity until the end.

Zakir was a phenomenon, who always made sure that he always stayed relevant to himself and the world. He twice undertook a ‘chilla’, a 40-day traditional ascetic ritual in which an Indian musician takes to practice alone non-stop, except to eat and sleep. He gave his life to music as his father did before him. Here was an artist who became the music, he embodied tabla to the point that he disappeared into the drums. He often looked toward the sky as he played with that face of complete immersion, of joyful abandon, like some kind of child mystic, a musical seer who had tapped into something that others were not privy to. It seemed that in his face you could tell he was seeing something up there, drawing him towards the infinite. As Jesus taught, ‘you must be like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven’, he seemed to do that naturally and this childlike nature was part of his captivating presence. What was coming out of that simple pair of drums could be an incredibly complex matrix of rhythmic intricacy and yet, within that sophistication, he infused the deepest sense of playfulness.

You could experience him on so many levels, like a musical physicist splicing the micro-beats of rhythm to discover new quantum elements or like a young boy jumping and laughing in a puddle of water.  Zakir continually reconciled the serious and rigorous intensity of pursuing classical music with a dedicated heart of humour and playfulness. He demonstrated the truth of Einstein’s statement that “the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

For the past 5 days, since Ustad’s graduation into the infinite, the global world of musicians and music lovers has poured out our deepest bows to this great phenomenon of rhythmic creativity. I trust soon that our grief shall turn to gratitude, for Zakir Hussain has only joined his father and personal hero, the great Ustad Alla Rakha on the other side, where they are reunited in their fantastic creativity. Their many duets are still blissful brain food and nourishment for the soul, an immense legacy upon which Zakir Hussain built his prodigious catalogue of classical accompaniment and infectious, innovative world crossover music.

These days, I have immersed myself once again in his magical music, through many late-night listening sessions. I imagine I will continue to drink from this fountain of inspiration all of my days, as will millions around the world for generations to come. We all shall be infinitely enriched by the enlivening, contagious spirit which is, Zakir.