Wah Ustad wah!

‘Zakir Hussain, the peerless tabla player, favours an impish strain of virtuosity. He’s a fearsome technician but also a whimsical inventor, devoted to exuberant play. He rarely seems overbearing, even when the blur of his fingers rivals the beat of a hummingbird’s wings,’ wrote The New York Times about the maestro when he performed at Carnegie Hall in 2009. As a rasik, I sat mesmerised as his fingers “danced” on his instrument, his fluttering digits sometimes hitting hard, sometimes a haze, seemingly barely touching the vibrating tabla membrane, thus evoking a collective gasp. Just when the audience got hooked onto the classical strains, he playfully riffed on a galloping horse, rev of a motorbike, roar of a siren, and other quirky rhythms, much to everyone’s amusement, before effortlessly segueing into the classical groove, something which had become his signature style. It was ethereal. 

Born to another great percussionist, Ustad Alla Rakha Khan, as was the tradition, the first “prayers” the exuberant father, a devout Muslim, whispered into the newborn’s ears were the tabla’s taal, stating, “This is how I pray. I am a worshipper of Goddess Saraswati and Lord Ganesha, and this is the vidya I want to pass on to my son. And he better start early.” And the prodigious son sure did, having started performing by the age of 7. And accompanying the pantheon of musical virtuosos like Pt. Ravishankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in his early teens. As a 13-year-old, he offered his services as a tabla player in lieu of his father for a concert, mischievously omitting to reveal his age! And thus the magical journey began.

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, the celebrated flautist, remembers his first meeting with the 10-year-old “radiant little moppet” playing the manjira with impeccable rhythm at a film song recording with the mighty Mohammed Rafi at the microphone. The Khan senior, his beloved abbaji—under whose tutelage he grew organically into a prodigy—trusted him deeply, which kept him grounded and endeared him to everyone he met, was probably distraught only once when he broke one of his fingers while playing gully cricket.

He exalted the tabla from an accompaniment to a solo act but always gave the centre stage to other artists while accompanying them, never hogging the limelight, being the showman that he had become. A Padma Vibhushan, he held on to his Indian passport even if it meant going to the Indian embassy in the US (where he lived) every time he required a visa. A perfectionist, giving his full, always living in the moment, whether he was making music, enjoying time with friends, or living life per se, is how everyone whose life he touched remembers Zakir Bhai. Wah Ustad wah!