Whether you were in an audience listening to the quick-thrumming crackle of his tabla drumming or hearing him wisecrack and expound at rapid pace in an interview about life and music-making, Zakir Hussain always left you with a quickened pulse and a smile.
The 73-year-old Bombay-born virtuoso, a longtime resident of San Anselmo, died on Sunday, Dec. 15, at a UCSF hospital from a heart condition aggravated by idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was surrounded by family and loved ones.
Hussain came to the U.S. following the footsteps and centuries-old drum patterns of his father, Alla Rakha Qureshi, who’d performed on tabla in the company of sitarist Ravi Shankar and sarodist Ali Akbar Khan. That generation introduced Indian classical music and instrumentation to Europe and the Americas in the mid-20th century with encouragement from such Western classical figures as violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Hussain, who’d begun concertizing with Khan at age 7 in his native city, went on to replace his father in Shankar’s ensemble while also pioneering the integration of the tabla, the prime instrument of Indian percussion, into Western genres.
“In India, my father used to bring home albums of the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and he didn’t know what to do with those cassettes,” Hussain told this writer in a 1989 interview. “So I arrived here knowing what I would use my tabla for, how I would make it work with these musicians. Then I came to realize that rhythm is universal.”
In 1973, Hussain recorded with both George Harrison and jazz saxophonist John Handy. Over the next two decades, he recorded with Van Morrison and Earth, Wind & Fire and collaborated with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart on the album Planet Drum, which received the first-ever Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 1992. Hussain also formed the group Shakti with Indian fusion violinist L. Shankar and English jazz guitarist John McLaughlin.
Married to Bay Area kathak dancer Antonia “Toni” Minnecola, Hussain established a family home and Moment! Records in San Anselmo, within walking distance of the Ali Akbar College of Music, where he taught tabla and other classes. He fathered two daughters, Anisa Qureshi, now a filmmaker, and Isabella Qureshi, a dancer. Minnecola became her husband’s manager.
Hussain’s discography includes nearly 70 recordings on Moment! and other labels. He and Hart won a second Grammy in 2009 for Global Drum Project, and Hussain composed several film soundtracks and performed on the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now. He spent several months of each year in his native India, in part to scout musicians for his larger ensembles. He toured widely in trios with jazz bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist Chris Potter and with bassist Edgar Meyer and banjoist Béla Fleck. These groups figured in Hussain’s long involvement with SFJAZZ, which made him a resident artistic director and presented him with the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
In all these contexts, Hussain brought breathtaking virtuosity, flexibility, and surprising tonal articulation to his drumming. With colleagues, fans, and the press, he was both unpredictably witty and reliably generous. Says Alam Khan, who succeeded his late father at the Ali Akbar College of Music, “Maestro Zakir’s music was fluid, like water, but with incredible force. I will continue to learn from him and be inspired by him until the end of my days. I love him, I will miss him, and I bow at his lotus feet.”
