Tabla Master Zakir Hussain, 73, Succumbs to Illness

By Bill Milkowski I Dec. 17, 2024

“Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.
(Photo: Michael Jackson)

Tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, one of India’s reigning cultural ambassadors and a revered figure worldwide renowned for his joyful and captivating virtuosity, died on Dec. 15 in a San Francisco hospital from complications of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare lung disease that causes progressive scarring of the lungs. He was 73.

According to the Times of India, Hussain was hospitalized for two weeks and later moved to intensive care as his condition worsened. His manager Nirmala Bachani said in a statement that Hussain had been battling blood-pressure related problems.

Hussain’s profound influence over five decades helped shape world music, most notably through his 50-year partnership with guitarist John McLaughlin in their groundbreaking East-West group Shakti, which won a 2024 Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album for their 2023 release, This Moment. The tabla maestro also won two other honors at the 66th Grammy Awards ceremony in the Best Global Music Performance and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album categories for his collaboration with Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck and Rakesh Chaurasia on As We Speak. Other significant collaborations over his illustrious career came with the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart on his Planet Drum project, bassist Bill Laswell on his Tabla Beat Science project and a host of recordings with prominent jazz musicians, including saxophonists John Handy (1975’s Karuna Surprise and 1976’s Hard Work) and Pharoah Sanders (1998’s Save Our Children), guitarist Pat Martino (1998 Fire Dance), keyboardist Joe Zawinul (2002’s Faces & Places), saxophonist Charles Lloyd (2006’s Sangram and 2022’s Trios: Sacred Thread) and bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist Chris Potter, collective known as The Crosscurrents Trio (2019’s Good Hope).

Hussain was also a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and guested on albums by George Harrison (1973’s Living In A Material World), Van Morrison (1979’s Into The Music), Jack Bruce (1990’s A Question Of Time), the Kronos Quartet (2000’s Caravan) and on two electric Miles Davis tribute recordings by guitarist Henry Kaiser and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith (2002’s Sky Garden and 2004’s Upriver). Hussain also led Masters of Percussion, a long-running group he formed in 1996 and continued touring with up until the time of his death (in fact, he had bookings with the group already slated for 2025). As a composer, he scored music for numerous feature films and also composed four concertos that saw premieres in India, Europe and United States (by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center).

Born March 9, 1951, in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, Hussain was the foremost disciple of his famous father, legendary tabla master Ustad Allah Rahka. A child prodigy, he began working professionally by age 12, when he began performing concerts of North Indian classical music in his native country. As a teenager, Hussain accompanied his father on a tour of the United States with Pandit Ravi Shankar, which culminated with a stunning performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in San Francisco in June 1967. Three years later, Hussain and McLaughlin met for the first time at a music store in New York’s Greenwich Village called the House of Musical Traditions. “Zakir and I met there during the summer of 1970,” McLaughlin recalled in a 2023 DownBeat interview. “I knew the people there and I used to go there to check out the sitars and tambouras and other Indian instruments. And I told the proprietor, ‘If ever a great Indian musician comes into the store, ask him if he would give a friend of yours a lesson; doesn’t matter what instrument.’ A few weeks later, I got a call about this great tabla player who was there and I said, ‘Ask him if he’ll give me a vocal lesson.’ So I went down to this store and Zakir, who was giving a rhythm workshop there, ended up giving me a vocal lesson. We just hit it off, and we really became pals.”

McLaughlin and Hussain first jammed together in 1972 at the Bay Area home of Ali Akbar Khan (Zakir was teaching at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley at the time). As the guitar great recalled, “I had never felt so instantly free and comfortable and joyful. And Zakir felt it, too. We both felt it. And I think it was from that experience that Shakti was born.” As Hussain recalled of that pivotal experience, “We jammed and it was like we had done this before. It never felt like we had to adjust or tell each other what to do. We just started playing, and it was just so right!”

Their first concert together happened in 1973 at Saint Thomas Church in midtown Manhattan. “And it was at that point that John floated the idea to us for us to play together as a band and travel,” Hussain recalled. “It was a very courageous decision that John made. He gave up a money-making machine like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and put himself in this situation with Shakti where there was no surety that this would survive, that this would even fly, that people would even accept it or understand what was happening. But he did it anyway.”

The group’s July 5, 1975 performance at Southampton College on Long Island was documented and later released in 1976 as Shakti’s first self-titled album. The group subsequently released A Handful of Beauty later that year followed by 1977’s Natural Elements before disbanding. They reformed more than 20 years later (with Hussain and McLaughlin being the only members of the original band) and released a series of live albums, including 1999’s Remember Shakti, 2000’s The Believer and 2001’s Saturday Night In Bombay. In 2023, they released their first studio album in 46 years, the Grammy-winning This Moment.

“I’ve just been so lucky,” Hussain said in a 2023 DownBeat interview. “How fortunate can one be to have these friends in Shakti for all these years and a relationship that spans these decades, but at the same time have a chance to be able to grow in a very deep manner and an understanding of each other’s abilities and roots and creative processes and so on. And therefore, we arrive at this juncture more enriched than when we began 50 years ago.”

He added that his peerless technique on the tabla was an amalgam of styles culled from various other percussionists that he admired and worked with over the years. “My basic technique is something that I learned from my father, but I’ve also absorbed the influences of people like Giovanni Hildago, Airto Moreira, Amando Peraza, Humza Al Din and so many different percussionists from all over the world who play their instruments with hands. Looking at all that and trying to move all that information on to my tabla has been my goal. This melodic element of the tabla, where I play bass lines and all that stuff, is definitely not an Indian thing to do. But watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me. Or watching Armando Peraza use five congas, and when he took a solo the congas not only projected rhythmic patterns but also melodic ideas — that had a big impact on me. So all that information inspired me to be able to try and make the tabla talk in the same manner. And that’s changed the way the tabla is played these days. A lot of young tabla players now have adopted this approach to being able to play tabla not just thinking about it as a rhythm instrument but also a melody instrument with the possibility to express emotions.”

In a statement, Hussain’s family said: “His prolific work as a teacher, mentor and educator has left an indelible mark on countless musicians. He hoped to inspire the next generation to go further. He leaves behind an unparalleled legacy as a cultural ambassador and one of the greatest musicians of all time.” DB