Maestro Zakir Hussain on his journey to becoming one of the world’s most sought‑after tabla players

The Universal Language

“Music is one of the few positive elements that’s left on this planet,” Hussain says of the importance of showcasing music cultures from around the world. “For that hour or two that you’re in a concert hall, it’s almost like you cleanse yourself of all your worries, and you can come out and face the world. So I feel that it’s important for musicians to, through [music], show the world how we should live together—how it’s possible for people of seemingly totally different points of view to find common ground. Though we speak different languages, we can communicate through the language of music and rhythm; nothing is lost in the conversation.”

The idea of music as conversation is one that Hussain has previously expanded on in Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book Zakir Hussain: A Life in Music, composed of a series of transcribed interviews. As he tells it in the book, “a proper conversation can only happen if you know each other well”, which is why he makes the effort to learn all about the musicians he plays with—not just the kind of music they play, but their entire person.

“All those levels and shades of information [about each musician] come together in this concoction of something called rhythm and melody,” he tells us. The concert in Singapore will show exactly that—Hussain has curated the line‑up of performances based on his experiences playing with each musician. “I know how this will all come together,” he says.

The metaphor of music as language and conversation can in fact be traced to his father, Alla Rakha, a legendary tabla player often credited for popularising the instrument in the West, and for raising Hussain as a child prodigy. When it became clear that the young Hussain was smitten with the tabla, Alla Rakha would wake him up at three in the morning to talk about—not practise—rhythms. 

Unlike its Western counterpart, Indian classical music is improvisational—almost like speaking a language, by “improvising” words and sentences. “That’s exactly the way [my father] taught me how to drum,” says Hussain. “He’d speak the rhythms to me with expression.” In such a way, Hussain learnt to “speak” the language of the rhythms to form more complex “phrases, sentences and paragraphs” in music.

Only after that did he pick up the tabla. “That was his thinking, that if you can speak the language and compose essays spontaneously, you’ll be able to improvise. So when I was taught the information, my hands already received it and I was able to play it.”

It is hard to overestimate the importance of his father in Hussain’s personal upbringing and artistic development. He tells this story often: tradition dictates that fathers are supposed to whisper prayers in their baby’s ear when they are born, but when Hussain was born, Alla Rakha sang rhythms instead. “He was a very crafty old man. He was already planting all that information in my brain,” Hussain quips. “It’s a blessing from my dad, my guru. That has brought me to the point where I am. His teachings, his knowledge that he transmitted to me, are in large part responsible for this.” 

But Hussain sees his mother as equally important to his development. He started making money playing the tabla by age 12 and had begun playing for Bollywood soundtracks, but through it all, his mother made sure that he and his siblings went to school. “We were the only kids in the neighbourhood who went to school,” he says. That, and “her passion in making sure we’d have the ability to be communicative”, prepared him for a career in the public eye—something Alla Rakha himself was not quite prepared to do.

Global Fame

Traditionally, tabla players did not often receive their flowers. They were poorly paid musicians seen as mere accompanists to vocalists. That certainly changed with Alla Rakha and his frequent collaborator, the sitarist Ravi Shankar, who were making Indian classical music a “household name” in the West. “[Western artists] noticed that there was a form of music that allowed them to be able to expand as musicians,” Hussain says. 

It was in this era that he first made his way to the US at the age of 18 in 1970, when his father fell ill and could not play at the concerts with Shankar scheduled in San Francisco. Shankar got Hussain as a replacement, which went well, but just before Hussain could return to India, he heard about a teaching job in the ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Hussain thus sank his roots in America as a teacher, amid growing interest in Indian classical music. And because his father was busy playing with Shankar, Western musicians turned to Hussain instead. “I was already sitting on the bus when the bus took off,” he says, describing the natural way in which his career flourished in the US.

“A chance encounter with John McLaughlin at a music store turned into us being able to play together in Shakti,” shares Hussain, who was also invited by George Harrison, the lead guitarist of the Beatles, to record for his 1973 studio album Living in the Material World. Then there was Mickey Hart, a drummer for the rock band Grateful Dead, who Hussain says “wanted to do rhythm albums with some Indian musicians in it”. Planet Drum was thus birthed in 1991, which won a Grammy for Best World Music Album. 

Hussain also composed music for Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha and several Merchant Ivory films, as well as played in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Through it all, he developed a reputation for blending Indian classical music with Western musical traditions, becoming one of the world’s most sought‑after tabla players. 

The Ties That Bind

It has never been just about the tabla for Hussain. It is also about the people closest to him. “My family, my wife, they’re the most integral part of my life,” he says. “The person that I’ve become is because of my relationship with my instrument and the support of my family.”

It was not always easy at the start, with him making very little money in the US, especially while raising his daughter with his wife, Antonia Minnecola. A student of Indian music and Kathak dance, Minnecola would support his career, pushing him to collaborate with figures such as American musicians Charles Lloyd and Edgar Meyer, while taking care of their daughter at home. “You have to have support,” Hussain says.

The musician has been through his fair share of tragedy. In 2000, his sister Razia passed away due to complications from a cataract surgery. Just a few hours later, his father also passed, from a heart attack. The loss of a close sister and his closest mentor left Hussain adrift for a few months. “Suddenly, there were hundreds of my father’s students who were now looking up [to] me. They reminded me of what I had lost,” he says. “For a few months, I couldn’t bring myself to play a concert or even practise.” 

Eventually, however, Hussain shares that he came to a point where he could “face the responsibilities that [he] had as a senior member of the family and towards [his father’s] students”. As he puts it: “This allowed me to share with the world his mind, his thoughts and his teachings in a way [that] I wasn’t doing before”. 

Since 2000, he has been organising an annual memorial concert, A Homage to Abbaji, in Mumbai, drawing legions of performing musicians and thousands of fans for a full day of music. He also expanded Masters of Percussion, the duet performance between him and his father, to include percussionists from all around India and the world. 

“I wasn’t so keen on lessening our relationship by adding other people,” he admits, “but then I decided that I can only offer my respects to him by doing what he desired to do, which was to bring rhythms to all over the world.” Today, Masters of Percussion has become a biannual entity and soon enough, Singapore will get a glimpse of Alla Rakha’s vision of world music. “In his name, the music has grown into a more responsible statement. And I’m thinking more about what I say, and projecting the music the way he’d have wanted it to be.” 

Hussain has no doubt that his father is with him when he plays. “Sometimes, it’s difficult to hold back the tears,” he says. “But his presence allows me to [tackle] any problems that may come. I can sail through [any performance] comfortably because he’s there watching over me.”

Don’t Call Me ‘Ustad’

In India, the honorific “Ustad” is used to designate an exquisitely talented musician, someone such as Alla Rakha. The first time it was prefixed to Hussain’s name, he was in the middle of performing in India with Shankar in 1988. Then, the star of the concert would play at two in the morning until six. By about 3am, someone walked up to Alla Rakha, who was sitting at the front, and whispered in his ear. He leapt to his feet and ran to the emcee to whisper in his ear; the emcee ran to whisper in Shankar’s ear.

It turned out that the office of The Times of India was located close to the auditorium where they were performing, and the newspapers came out at around 3am. Someone in the audience had picked up the paper and right smack on the page was Hussain’s name. 

Shankar put his sitar down, picked up the microphone, looked at Hussain and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, then pointed at Hussain. “Ustad Zakir Hussain has just been awarded the Padma Shri.” As Hussain tells it, the “whole audience erupted”. He had just won the fourth‑highest civilian award in India, but “when somebody who you love, respect and revere, like Ravi Shankar and your father, give you that love, respect and blessing on stage in front of thousands of people, there’s no better diploma of any kind than that”, he enthuses. 

Even so, he refuses to allow us to refer to him as “Ustad”. Throughout this video call interview, he is quick to credit the people who has helped him along the way and speaks passionately about the music, less so about himself. Such is his commitment to the craft that he remains sprightly when he speaks, despite having arrived in Hong Kong, where he is scheduled to perform the following day, with barely any sleep. As he mentioned earlier in the interview, he is not done but ready “to keep climbing”.

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