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In a 3-day memorial, Sundar Nursery to mark Ustad Zakir Hussain’s 75th birth anniversary
A section of these photographs from her ‘Ustad Museum’, which was recently set up at Mumbai’s National Centre for Performing Arts, comes to the Capital as part of a three-day memorial for Hussain, who would have turned 75 this month.
Zakir Hussain at his Napean Sea Road home in Mumbai. (Credit: Dayanita Singh)
When noted photo artist Dayanita Singh began photographing at 18, her first subject was the young tabla player Zakir Hussain, not yet the Ustad he would go on to become.
What began almost casually as a photo project while studying at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, she recalls, was an attempt to “capture a memory of the time; like a caress” and never intended as photography in any formal sense. Neither she nor Hussain and other famed musicians she travelled with on a tour bus, saw her as a photographer.
Yet, says 65-year-old Singh, it was in those very encounters that Hussain shaped her way of seeing. Singh would go on to win the distinguished Hasselblad Award, widely considered the world’s most prestigious photography prize, in 2022.
A section of these photographs from her ‘Ustad Museum’, which was recently set up at Mumbai’s National Centre for Performing Arts, comes to the Capital as part of a three-day memorial for Hussain, who would have turned 75 this month.
Presented by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), ‘Zakir Hussain, The Way Forward’ will present Singh’s photo exhibit, a slew of performances, talks and film screenings at Sundar Nursery from March 27-29.
“He trained me to listen; to take two-three images, then put the camera down and listen. And that I now realise was a very different way of photographing. It was tender and somehow less self-conscious. I have a very different taleem. I studied at the Zakir Hussain academy of focus,” says Delhi-based Singh.
She adds that she has slowly come to understand her training in the “green room gharana of photography”, where observation, intimacy and rhythm, mattered more than the crescendo moments on stage, ones that the other photographers ran after.
Singh kept photographing Hussain for the next 43 years.
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Delhi, says Singh, “has been waiting for a time to mourn and celebrate Zakir ji”, who passed away due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in San Francisco in December 2024. “I hope that the sunken garden where the exhibition will be, might become a space where we can all meet on his birthdays or any day: a Zakir ji baithak,” she adds.
Singh will open the three-day memorial in a tribute conversation with Hussain’s prominent collaborators, including tabla exponent Yogesh Samsi, percussionist Ranjit Barot and noted mridangam player Sridhar Parthasarathy. This will be followed by Singh’s talk titled ‘Travelling with Zakir Hussain’ and a performance titled ‘Taal Vandana’ by Hussain’s students that will be led by Samsi.
Two documentaries on Hussain – ‘The Speaking Hand’ by filmmaker Sumantra Ghoshal, who also made the Wah Taj advertisement, and a concert film by Hussain’s US-based filmmaker daughter Anisa Qureshi will also be screened.
Day 2 will feature a talk with sound engineer Mujeeb Dadarkar, who worked extensively with Hussain during his live shows. A section titled ‘Chitrahaar’ will feature film songs in which Hussain played the tabla or those that he composed. Anantha R Krishnan will lead the final performance at the amphitheatre, which will also feature a Bharatanatyam performance by famed Malayalam actor and dancer Shobana.
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