I do not believe in the notion that any single player/composer/writer/whatever kind of artist is – or ever was the best.
That said, Zakir Hussain was undoubtedly the most influential, most eclectically-inclined, and most ubiquitous hand-drummer/percussionist in human history.
(Jim McGuire took the photo of him)
Zakir Hussain died on Monday, in his adoptive home city of San Francisco.
He was born 73 years earlier, in what was then Bombay, now Mumbai.
This is the titlepiece of Zakir’s 1987 album Making Music. (Its English guitar hero and its Indian master of North Indian bamboo flutes/bansuri were by then – and so remained, thereafter – longtime mutual admirers/friends/occasional colleagues)
As a tabla player, Zakir Hussain was incredibly virtuosic and inventive, he also applied his hands – very effectively, always – to just about anything that could be hit, shaken or stroked.
He was also consistently astonishing whenever he took a solo that deployed no purchasable instrument whatsoever – just his own voice and hands.
Most especially, Zakir had an absolute genius for collaboration, sometimes in contexts where the tabla’s presence was entirely novel…and, seemingly, most “unlikely”.
For instance:
Earlier this year, in the Indian edition of Rolling Stone, Zakir Hussain said this:
The moment you think you’re a maestro, you are distancing yourself from the others, You have to be part of a group, and not dominate it.
He never forgot that his first several years were lived in a single room which housed his entire family. It contained no toilet.
Assuredly, Zakir was a maestro, as is inescapably evident in the video, below. I am quietly confident that no pre-Zakir tabla soloist ever quoted Rossini’s greatest hit.
This is from a 2010 trio concert, with Béla Fleck and double bassist Edgar Meyer (they toured together earlier this year)
Initially, Zakir is “solo”, but he is far from alone!
Note: you will have to click the “Watch on YouTube” prompt. That done, it does play.
Across just about every imaginable genre, Zakir played “live” and on disc with a great many noted musicians; more than a few of them regarded him as the greatest and/or most inspiring player they had ever met.
Along with just about anyone else lucky enough to have several times seen and heard him in concert, I am very sure that Zakir Hussain was one of the greatest instrumentalists, ever.
An obituary is here.
This will link you to three other Pelican Yoga posts that benefited from his musicianship.
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