In Islamic tradition, the father of a newborn is expected to recite the adhan, or call to prayer, in his child’s right ear, so that the first sounds the baby hears upon entering this world are exaltations of God’s supremacy, setting them on a path of grace and virtue. It should come as no surprise, then, that the first sounds Zakir Hussain heard when he was born, one distant March in Bombay, were not words of faith, but tabla rhythms whispered by his father, Ustad Alla Rakha, himself a master of the instrument. For Hussain, destiny was not a dying breath — it was a morning song, a patriarch’s auspicious prophecy. And so, a virtuoso was born.
Hussain, who passed away on Dec. 15 at age 73, was a titan of tabla, the hand drums used as the main percussive instrument in a wide variety of South Asian music, from Qawwali to Hindustani classical to Gurbani Kirtan. His talent was fierce and precocious, nurtured by his father from an early age. “You grow up in the atmosphere of music 24 hours a day,” Hussain once said, “and you don’t have to do anything else.” Hussain played his first concert when he was just seven years old, and began touring at 12. In 1970, at the wizened age of 18, he made his American debut at the Fillmore East alongside Ravi Shankar. Months later, he joined jam sessions with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco, and thus began a storied partnership with Dead drummer Mickey Hart. In 1975, the two men formed the Diga Rhythm Band, whose debut album featured an innocuous, bouncy track called “Happiness is Drumming,” which would eventually become the Dead’s classic “Fire on the Mountain.”
Hussain’s collaborations with Western musical legends went far beyond the psychedelic haze of the West Coast and the Dead. In 1972, George Harrison tapped him to play on Living in the Material World, the much-anticipated follow-up to All Things Must Pass. Hussain, who originally intended to play drums on the album, was dissuaded from doing so by Harrison, who insisted that he stick with tabla. Hussain remembered the interaction fondly: “That was the day I dropped the idea of wanting to be a rock drummer,” he recalled, and instead “focused on making my instrument speak all the languages of rhythm that exist on this planet. I can’t thank George enough for straightening me out.”
Hussain’s list of collaborators over the years is perhaps as diverse and extensive as his percussive talent — Earth, Wind & Fire, Van Morrison, Pharaoh Sanders, Yo-Yo Ma, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pat Martino, Charles Lloyd, and Eric Harland all benefited from his deft touch and keen ear. In 1979, Hussain even worked with Francis Ford Coppola, lending a hand with the soundtrack for Apocalypse Now.
Despite his prominence as an Indian musician in what was, and continues to be, a primarily white industry, Hussain was outspoken against the tokenization of brown musicians that so often occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, as artists like the Beatles and John Coltrane helped popularize South Asian music in England and the United States. “As far as Indian music is concerned,” he said, “I wouldn’t call myself a torchbearer. It’s the media that focuses on it, like [how] at one time Pandit Ravi Shankar was the poster boy of Indian music. It did not matter that there were equally good sitar players in India at that time.”
In late October, I had the privilege of seeing Hussain live at a small theater in Connecticut, in what would be one of his final shows. The performance was sold out, and the 500-person crowd was almost entirely made up of diasporic South Asians. A palpable sense of reverence hung heavy in the venue, and Hussain took the stage to uproarious, interminable applause, which ceased only when he silenced the audience with a gentle raise of his hand. For the next hour and half, alongside the Indian classical musician Rahul Sharma, Hussain put on a display of bona fide musical sorcery. The air with which he played was restrained yet frenzied, candid yet occult. There were no pretensions of showmanship, no displays of braggadocio — just the hollow ringing of palms on goatskin. His rhythms began slowly, like a freight train creaking to life, and within seconds reached mesmerizing highs of elegant virtuosity. He was the real deal: a genuine master of his craft, a man who, from his first seconds on this earth, had been called to a higher purpose. And he answered.
In the early 2000s, Hussain was asked about the increasing commercialization of music, and whether it might compromise the art form itself. “In every venture, musical or otherwise, you will always have good and bad,” he responded in an early-internet chat with fans. “The same applies here.” What is eminently apparent, in the aftermath of his untimely and heartbreaking demise, is that these words ring true for the grand venture of life itself. We should count ourselves exceedingly blessed, then, that in this scheme of existence, so often marked by strife and tribulation, we were lucky enough to have Mr. Hussain, and the magic of his music. They brought only good, and they will be sorely missed.
