Ustad Zakir Hussain was a peerless percussionist who exalted tabla to a global status and blurred boundaries

Hussain is survived by wife and Kathak teacher Antonia Minnecola, daughters Isabella Qureshi, Anisa Qureshi, brothers and tabla players Fazal and Taufiq Qureshi and sister Khursheed Aulia.

Cultural ambassadors and musicians such as Hussain are not easy to come by. It takes hard work, interest, talent, innovation, and something magical to make audacious trailblazers who are also repositories of age-old philosophy and knowledge. Listening to Hussain’s music — be it at the uptown ticketed concerts or the others where the entry was free and the aisles were brimming with rasiks — masses and musicians who heard him together or through his global collaboration Shakti and his extensive work with legends like George Harrison, John McLaughlin, and Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart — always gave one a heightened sense of being, giving us a peek into his self-actualisation. And, perhaps ours.

He made it look effortless — his fingers reaching dynamic peaks and valleys with dizzying complexity, those moments when the daanya (the left, smaller drum) would dominate the baanya with sounds one hadn’t heard on the tabla. Then there was the trademark head banging with those curly locks, going from devotional beats to rock-style rhythms in a jiffy. This glimpse of him, which one saw in Desh Raag and Mile Sure Mera Tumhara of messages of unity in diversity in pre-liberalised India, and even in those Taj Mahal tea ads, was at full display in his live concerts in Indian winters, the only time California-based Hussain would come down and do back to back shows in cities big and small. And, people came in droves to listen to his music that was an obeisance to a higher power, what he would call “a hazri (attendance) in the court of music”.

The story goes that when Hussain was born, his father and Punjab gharana tabla legend Ustad Alla Rakha whispered tabla bols (syllables used to represent the sounds of the instrument) in his son’s ears instead of a prayer from the Quran. When his angry wife asked him why Alla Rakha’s answer was uncomplicated — tabla bols were as good as ibadat (worship) for him.

Alla Rakha was a doting father but an exacting guru, who taught his eldest son with a lot of enthusiasm in their one-room apartment behind the Mahim Dargah. The training began at three — first as mathematical games which later became sophisticated rhythm patterns and stories from life. Hussain blossomed. But he also yearned to do things that other kids his age did. Like playing cricket, a sport his father banished after he almost broke a finger when a ball hit it hard one day. He was beaten up, the only time ever, right after. Riyaz (training) at 4 am for three hours before attending a Catholic school was suddenly plain sailing.

With his first concert at seven, Hussain started touring when he was 12 or 13 years old. When Alla Rakha was abroad, or his dates clashed, Hussain would accompany him in his place. While he kept performing with Hindustani classical musicians, including his father’s contemporaries Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan among others, he wanted more from life and music and moved to the US when he was 20. Once in San Francisco, he taught at Ali Akbar College of Music and travelled for concerts.

At 22, he met guitarist John Mclaughlin through the owner of a shop for musical instruments in the US. They co-founded Shakti in 1973, beginning their musical lives amid disparate worlds of thought and artistic sensibilities and landed on what the world would go on to call “world music”. Hussain composed for films, acted in some, spoke impishly, played concerts toured extensively and remained synonymous with the tabla finding admiration and fans in India as well as abroad. While his father and his technical brilliance brought out the tabla from the shadows of being a background accompanying instrument and gave it social stature like never before, Hussain made it unambiguous, spontaneous and thrilling; glamorous even.

Over two years ago, the poignant moment when he played pallbearer for santoor maestro Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma’s hearse three years ago during the pandemic, his grief palpable on his masked face, was discussed extensively on social media as the true example of the “idea of India”. For Hussain, it was not as reductive, but only a gesture to mark the deep bond, musical and otherwise, the two had shared over the years.

“I think people and politicians exist on two different planes… We tend to generalise and in doing so, create the danger of a bigger schism than we actually need to. Not every one of any sect is bad. That idea seems to have taken a backseat. What we need to do is just be able to hear whatever the powers that be want to tell us, but judge for ourselves as citizens where is it that we belong and what it is that we need in our lives to make it better. Probably, we’ll get there one of these days,” he told this writer once.

A visiting professor at Stanford and Princeton, the multiple-Grammy-winning Hussain was awarded the Padma Vibhushan last year.

In the last couple of decades, Hussain had more shows and collaborative projects lined up. His next year was already booked out as the news came in. But in all of the tizzy of his busy touring life, when the sound of the tabla had become more of a pleasure-seeking exercise than just showing off the technical prowess, where new idioms were being formed and where the noble world of caution was thrown to the wind, and all that remained was a haze — original, thorough, and the kind that is remembered for a lifetime.