[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. On tomorrow's show, trailblazing journalist Connie Chung. She's written a memoir and she'll join us to discuss. Folks, Halloween is just over two weeks away. If you haven't come up with a concept of a plan for a costume, we've got you. Coming on the show tomorrow will be Broadway costume designer Amanda Whidden. She'll share some of her tips on how to turn your creative ideas into reality and she'll take your calls. That is in the future. Let's get this hour started with world renowned tabla player Zakir Hussain.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain]

Alison Stewart: That is the sound of the tabla played by one of the world's most renowned players, Zakir Hussain. Zakir hooked home three Grammy’s at this past year's award ceremonies and has long been recognized for bringing the percussive sounds of Indian classical music into western styles. He's been a collaborator of the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart since '91 on projects like Planet Drum and the Global Drum Project, which aims to encourage musical fusion across cultures through percussion. He's also played with artists like Van Morrison and the late George Harrison.

Zakir is now doing a tour in our area with Centaur player Raul Sharma. We'll hear a little bit about that later. Now, please welcome me in joining Zakir Hussain. It's so nice to meet you.

Zakir Hussain: It's nice to meet you too, Alison.

Alison Stewart: On the face of it, tabla playing seems like it would be fallen to the western idea of the rhythm section.

Zakir Hussain: Yes, it usually does.

Alison Stewart: Yes. In Indian music you often play with much longer phrases than eight-bar beats. How do you describe tabla and the kind of drums that western audiences would be more familiar with?

Zakir Hussain: Well, to put it in a nutshell, you talk about drummers in the western world, but then you have drummers in the western world who are band leaders like Buddy Rich or somebody like that. They play solos, they perform and they are featured drummers who do things. Where tabla fits in in Indian music is exactly that. It's not only an accompanying instrument but also has a solo repertoire and a tradition that has existed for over 300 years. That, therefore, has developed an immense cache of repertoire that can be performed on the instrument. I

n fact, in India it's normal to have a 1 hour or a 90-minute tabla concert or a rhythm concert where aficionados, 1,000 to 2,000 people will come and sit there and listen to a concert and enjoy it, appreciate it. That's how it works in Indian music. One thing about tabla is that it's an instrument that lends itself well to being able to fit in with technical abilities of any other drums. Because of its muscular tradition and fingers, like piano, interacting together. You can be a bongo drum, you can be a conga drum, you can be a drum set drum and do all that and transpose all that information onto the tabla.

It can provide a harmonic element as well, where the low drum acts as a bass and the high drum acts as a rhythm, like a bongo, but with a tone and a pitch. Therefore it allows for that harmonic experience as well as a rhythmic experience.

Alison Stewart: Is it good for improvising?

Zakir Hussain: Yes. It's amazing for improvising because that's what Indian music is all about. You set up a melody and a bridge, and then you improvise, a la jazz. The difference, whereas in jazz, you improvise over a set of chords called the form. In Indian music, you set up a melody in a raga mode, like one chord, and then the whole song is based in that one chord. A more melodic form as opposed to a harmonic form.

Alison Stewart: You don't have a tabla in front of you right now. I'm hoping you can give us a little demonstration with your voice. Have you heard of this? The Konnakol?

Zakir Hussain: Oh, yes. The Konnakol, which is what we first learn. I remember when I was two days old and I was brought home from the hospital, and my father-- I was handed to my dad. The tradition is that the father would recite a prayer in the child's ear. The first words that the child should hear is that. My father took me in his arm and sang rhythms in my ear because he was a rhythmist. My mother was, of course, very upset about it. He said, "This is my prayer," and this is what he is going to do. After that, the tradition was that he would just sing rhythms to me.

At the age of three or four, when I started to [unintelligible 00:05:45], he would take me to a shrine that was near the house. We'd sit there and we'd sing rhythms with each other. He would say, "Okay, here's one." [vocalization] I had to reply to that. [vocalization] I had to make things up to be able to further the conversation, advance the conversation. That's how it is. We learn it as a language. When we play, we think about it as something that we are telling. It's a story, it's a happening. You try to induce the instrument into making emotional content into the performance. That's one of the advantages that tabla has over other percussion instruments.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zakir Hussain. He is a world renowned tabla player. Earlier this year, you won three Grammys.

Zakir Hussain: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Congratulations, first of all.

Zakir Hussain: Thank you very much. I was lucky.

Alison Stewart: You were lucky?

Zakir Hussain: You end up connecting with some incredible musicians and you ride on their shoulders. I was on this album with my friend of 50 years, John McLaughlin, who's a jazz guitarist. We formed a band in the 1970s called Shakti. It didn't quite get that recognition, but this year it won the best world Music album award. I made another album with Béla Fleck, the banjo player.

Alison Stewart: We'll get there. We'll get there. First, let's hear a little bit from the album that won best global music album. This is the song Bending the Rules. Just a little bit.

Zakir Hussain: Okay.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain: Bending the Rules]

Alison Stewart: Awards aside, what were your goals for recording this record, that song?

Zakir Hussain: We were sitting in our own little homes, dealing with the pandemic and talking with each other, connecting. We started sending music to each other, MP3 files or whatever. Then John started putting them together and he said, "Wait a minute, guys. This sounds like we could actually put all this together and make an album." That's how it began. Then we got seriously involved in it and we figured out software which would allow us to interact on Zoom and audio movers. This is how the album was born. Then finally, when the pandemic was done, me and the other rhythmist, Selva, got together in Monte Carlo with John and laid down the rhythm track to give it a live feel.

That's how it came together. While we were making an album, one of our friends called us and he said, "Hey, guys, do you realize by the time this is done and it comes out, it will be 50 years that you've been together?" Then John and me that is. 50 years since it was first founded, the band. It felt just right. It was perfect. It allowed us the time we needed to be able to reminisce and put this together in the way so we could put a concoction of all those 50 years into this album. That's what happened.

Alison Stewart: That's lovely. You also won best global music performance for your contribution to a track called Pashto. Who will we hear on this track when we hear this?

Zakir Hussain: Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, myself, and this Indian flower, Rakesh Chaurasia. We were on the album. Pashto was something that was my nod to an old friend of my dad, who was a keeper of this tradition, which put together Indian, northern Indian folk music with Celtic music.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

Zakir Hussain: It turns out that the British army had these musicians who played the bagpipes and whistles and whatnot. They got together with the northern frontier musicians of that time, 200 years ago, and interacted. Instruments were exchanged and so on. In recent times, when I was growing up, there were still bands in India which played a very hybrid form of music with bagpipes and whistles and bodrons and so on and so forth. This gentleman was my father's dear friend. To give a nod to-- Even at that time, with such violence around us, there were these musicians who crossed over all those hindrances and made music together that had something positive to say. That's what Pashto was all about.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain: Pashto]

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zakir Hussain. He is a world renowned tabla player. We're talking about his Grammy wins, his current tour, his long career of collaborating and bringing all the sounds of India to our ears. You've talked about listening and the importance of listening to the musicians that you're playing with. What happens when you listen?

Zakir Hussain: You react more naturally and inject that which is important for the conversation. I must give you a little example of it. There was an actor called David Niven at one time in Hollywood, and he, as a young actor, released a movie. In those days, the tradition was to show the movie in private, in a party, on a screen in Hollywood, in somebody's home. He did that, and there was everybody coming up to him and saying, "That was great. That was great. That was great." There was this one senior actor who sat in the corner without saying anything.

Finally, David approached him and said, "Mister Chaplin, do you have anything to say about this?" Mister Chaplin said, "Young man, don't just stand there waiting for your turn to speak. Learn to listen." The question is, if you are not listening, you're not aware of the conversation. That in improvised form of music is an essential part. Without listening, you're not able to put things together. When someone like Miles Davis says, "Too many notes," it means that you're taking over so much time that you're invading someone else's space and not allowing for the conversation to be a collective. That's listening. The most important seed in the plant called improvisation.

Alison Stewart: You make a point of working with younger artists and musicians, a mentor relationship. As you're passing down the musical importance of Indian music to these younger artists, what would you describe as the most important innovation in the way music is made now?

Zakir Hussain: Technologically, there has been great advances which has allowed for the music to be able to be projected in a more present way than it would have been before. Having said that, the most important advance is that the young people of today realize the importance of tradition. They realize that it is possible to be able to ride on the shoulder of tradition and make it valid in the time of progress and make it acceptable in present day or even in the future and still maintaining the facade that has been laid out before us hundreds of years ago.

Having that confidence in that which you represent is the great- I wouldn't call it innovation. I would call it an acceptance level that the art form has reached where pride is expressed in being able to be associated with that which your forefathers represented than it ever was before.

Alison Stewart: What have you learned from the young folks?

Zakir Hussain: I have learned to appreciate that. Because of that, it gives me confidence to be able to keep doing what I'm doing and to have that support from the youngsters and knowing that for them it is important that I do what I do.

Alison Stewart: Zakir, you have a film-- You have a cameo in the film Monkey Man, which came out earlier this year, directed by Dev Patel. We have a piece of an interview that Dev did talking about why he wanted you for this role and why he wanted the tabla for a particular scene. Let's hear it.

Dev Patel: For me, our cinema, our culture is rooted in music and Indian classical music. It's overlooked by the youth. My best friend Raghul, he's an ardent Indian classical fan. I went to dinner with this man, Zakir. I was like, "I went to dinner with this dude." He's like, "Do you know who that is? That's Zakir Hussain. He's like the greatest to ever play the drums, the tabla, ever. He's one of one." That led me down a path of watching all of his videos. Then I reached out to him and I was like, "Look, I've done this sequence. I want to do a musical jazz thing."

In India, they call it a jugalbandi, a call and answer. "You tear up the drums and I'm going to be on this dusty rice sack, and you're going to be my mister Miyagi or R2D2. You're going to not speak, but you're going to speak to me with your instrument and help me tune mine." Then it's going to explode and get bigger and bigger.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting, all the different cross cultural milestones that he mentioned in that clip. When you think about the tabla, why do you think music, maybe percussion, is good at bringing out these similarities in cross cultural reference? R2D2 to Indian classical music.

Zakir Hussain: It harks to the time we live in. Everything is available to us at our fingertips. It's there. We step out of our home and there is a Cinemax. We open up our computer and there's Netflix or whatever. We are able to keep abreast of what's happening at the other half of the world, on the other side of the planet at the same time. That's why the young people understand that the acceptance of what somebody does in Japan, or in Indonesia, or in India, in Africa, in any part of the world, is now a natural progress in being able to speak that language in a universal form.

Then that's why you can associate tabla with an R2D2 or associate it with a character like Mister Miyagi. It will make total sense to whoever is listening to that conversation and put two and two together.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zakir Hussain. As we heard earlier, you're going to be touring with Rahul Sharma, whose father was a musician as well, as you have mentioned about your own father. He's your friend as well. Yes?

Zakir Hussain: Yes. I played for 40 years with Rahul Sharma's father. In fact, I consider him as one of my mentor in my young age, helping me. You need to have a black boat to throw things in and be accepted. He was that who allowed me to be me on stage and gain that confidence. Yes, we did play together so much, and his son Rahul, who's a worthy successor of his father's legacy. To have him there and to hear that music in a younger hand and through a younger mind and that musicology and that musicality is a challenge for me to be able to find a new way to be able to advance that conversation that I used to have 30 years ago with his father.

It's fun to be able to discover nooks and corners in my music, which Rahul and his way of playing that music requires for me to express through. That keeps the fire burning and keeps things more present and more fun.

Alison Stewart: You can still be challenged at this point in your career?

Zakir Hussain: Yes. I can be challenged because today's young musicians are not just married to this one way of looking at music. They have a universal understanding of music. An Indian musician playing a raga structure, for instance, is not only experiencing that raga in an Indian mode, but also finding similarities of what it is in Japan, or what it is in Indonesia, or what it is in a jazz concert, or in an African ensemble, and tie it all together into giving a projection of that particular mode in a more worldly manner. For me, it has now become-- Like when I played with Ravi Shankar.

My first concert in America was with Ravi Shankar at the film [unintelligible 00:21:56] in 1970. Things have changed since then. Sitar players today are much more panoramic in their understanding of music. To have that challenge and hear the same music but with so many layers of incredible harmonic influences, something to react to, keeps me on my toes.

Alison Stewart: You're playing Ridgefield, Connecticut, tomorrow. You'll be in Troy, New York, on Friday. You and Rahul Sharma have a sold out show at Symphony Space here in the city. That'll be on Sunday. What should people expect at one of your shows?

Zakir Hussain: We will reminisce a little bit about me and his dad and what was that all about. A lot of the people who are coming are fans of his dad, who saw me and him play so much together in New York. We will see where that goes.

Alison Stewart: You can hear more from Zakir Hussain if you tune in on Friday, October 18th at 11:00 PM. you can hear his live performance on WNYC's New Sounds, along with more thoughts on his music and his career with our own John Schaeffer. Zakir, thank you so much for being here.

Zakir Hussain: It's a pleasure.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on a little bit of you and santoor player Rahul Sharma. This is from 2018.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain & Rahul Sharma]