The Global Ambassador Of Indian Music

He was a formidable musician but seemed utterly human, a Peter Pan who wore his genius with deceptive lightness.

Sandip Roy remembers Ustad Zakir Hussain.

Social media is reverberating with Zakir Hussain music clips these days. Zakir Hussain's puckish smile as he says Waah Taj.

Zakir Hussain jamming with Shakti. Zakir Hussain drumming up a tabla storm while Ali Akbar Khan fixes a snapped string on his sarod.

Zakir Hussain with his father, the maestro Alla Rakha.

Watching them one cannot help but smile and marvel at his quicksilver genius.

But it was a post without any music or even a picture of the man that felt the most heartbreaking. My friend Anirvan Chatterjee, who lives in Berkeley, California, shared a screenshot of a message from Cal Performances in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dear Anirvan

You are receiving this email because you currently hold tickets to Zakir Hussain and Masters of Percussion, scheduled for March 21, 2025 at Zellerbach Hall.

We are writing today to share the devastating news of Hussain's sudden passing yesterday, December 15.

We grieve deeply the passing of this master who has been a pillar of the Bay Area cultural landscape for decades.

The loss to the world of music is huge. The obituaries struggle to do justice to the man who had won Grammys (three this year alone), the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship, Japan's Kyoto Prize as well as India's Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.

His artistry spanned continents. His obituary on National Public Radio called him a legend who defied genres.

But that message from Cal Performances also reminded me this world traveller in music did something I never expected.

He made thousands of Indian immigrants like me feel at home in a place like California. When I watched Zakir Hussain play at the SFJazz festival, I felt my worlds coming together with a dhaa.

Hussain was one of several Indian classical artistes who set up schools and studios in the West.

Ambassadors of Indian classical music, they were also trying to expand its horizons. When Ravi Shankar was turning 90, Zakir Hussain told me Ravi Shankar was an "innovator" who was trying to take music "from the closely guarded world of the palace court to a more open interactive way of playing."

The West gave him fame and wealth but at the same time he also learned from the West. "Western world is the master of presentation -- Hollywood, Broadway, opera," Hussain said.

"They know how to bring art onto the stage. He learned how to break it down without watering it down."

And in the process, they got to be "recognised in India as a conqueror of the West."

Zakir Hussain was much younger than Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He was only 7 when he first played with Ali Akbar Khan, 13 or 14 when he played with Ravi Shankar.

But he might have well been talking about himself. He said those pioneers opened the doors for musicians like him. One Indian classical musician led to another.

"When a Chinese restaurant opens somewhere and people go to eat there, there is a need to have more Chinese restaurants."

But why California? Ali Akbar Khan considered New York but felt it was too big and impersonal and he was invited to teach a session on the West Coast by a local couple, the Scripps who had set up the Asia Society for Eastern Arts.

Tabla legend Swapan Chaudhuri, who taught at the Ali Akbar College of Music said, "They liked the atmosphere in California. There was a lot of interest in Indian spirituality here in the 1960s.

"Ali Akbar Khan said he would set up something in Northern California. Ravi Shankar said alright, I will set something up in South then."

When I moved there in the 1990s I remember local desi newspapers and magazines filled with ads for Bharata Natyam classes and music workshops. This had not always been the case.

"As engineers who came of age in the 1970s, we had zero exposure to Indian music, dance, fine arts. We were all suffering from a severe case of cultural malnutrition," says Arvind Kumar, an IIT graduate who lives in San Jose.

In 1987 he started India Currents, a free magazine covering the Indian cultural scene in California.

It was a go-to place to find an Indian dentist (the ones who understood turmeric stains on teeth) or news about a Birju Maharaj Kathak workshop.

Zakir Hussain's smiling face was a fixture in the magazines as were announcements from the Ali Akbar College of Music.

When my parents came to visit from India, I took them to see Chitresh Das dance Kathak alongside a flamenco dancer from Spain in a theatre in San Francisco.

It made California a gurukul of its own. The Ali Akbar College was in a building with a stained glass image of Saraswati in the window, something we found beautiful and familiar but unremarkable because we thought of them as musicians, not Hindu or Muslim.

It was a musical statement not a political one like Alla Rakha being both a devout Muslim and a devotee of Saraswati.

While their artistic genius is often remarked upon, "People don't realize (these cultural ambassadors) made tremendous sacrifice to spread our music around the world," Swapan Chaudhuri told me.

When they came here in the 1960s the Bay Area wasn't studded with Indian grocery stores like it is now.

Ali Akbar Khan told me about how much he missed ilish fish and rasamalali sweets.

He said he always felt he was trying to "translate" his culture.

"It's like the difference between Ma and Mummy -- it's almost the same but not quite," he said.

But they persevered and when my generation reached there, we found our music already waiting us. As if to reassure us that this too could be home.

They helped a new generation of Indian Americans to find their own rhythm.

After Zakir Hussain's death Indian-American tabla player Robin Sukhadia shared many memories of the man who inspired him on his own musical journey.

Sukhadia even has a frame drum that Hussain autographed and gifted him after a tabla workshop in 2014, his signature carrying a cheeky hint of his tablas.

Sukhadia shared a picture he had taken in 2008 of Ali Akbar Khan with his arms around the two tabla greats, Swapan Chaudhuri and Zakir Hussain.

They seemed to have been captured in mid-joke, all of them laughing.

"I felt I was being shown something important," writes Sukhadia. "Laugh, enjoy and be human."

Perhaps that was Zakir Hussain's greatest gift. He was a formidable musician but seemed utterly human, a Peter Pan who wore his genius with deceptive lightness.

Yet, of course, the discipline was paramount whether in California or Calcutta.

He just adapted to each environment with grace. For example, in the US concerts were strictly time-bound while in India time was more fluid.

He told me he remembered playing in Mumbai at 3 in the morning with Ravi Shankar.

"My father was sitting in front. Someone ran up to him to Ravi-ji and whispered in his ear. He beamed.

And then took the microphone pointed to me and said "Ustad Zakir Hussain has just received the Padma Shri." My father jumped on stage.

I cannot imagine receiving news like that in a better way."

These stories will linger. As will the music. And every time Sukhadia plays his frame drum a little bit of Zakir Hussain will be there.

But that Cal Performance refund notice reminds us that while the music remains in all those clips everyone is sharing, the musician is gone.

There is simply no refunding that loss.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com