Zakir Hussain Read online

  When I accompanied Pandit Ravi Shankarji, the great sitarist, all those recordings and concerts were in my head. I could close my eyes and see Raviji and my father looking at each other during a performance, smiling, nodding. I could visualize Abba doing something and Raviji responding with a wonderful emotion, or vice versa.

  Those memories allowed me to provide the kind of support that Ravi Shankarji expected of me when we played together. He was the main artist and I was the accompanist. My response to him was based on my familiarity with his music—perhaps it was not the response that my father gave him; it was bound to be slightly different because I have a different temperament—my tone, phraseology and sounds are different. My playing probably had an element of surprise and that may have sparked a different chain of events.

  NMK: Does this element of surprise inspire the lead musician?

  ZH: Inspiration comes because the lead musician is in his comfort zone. You don’t just throw him off a mountain without a parachute. He has to be in his comfort zone, and then he or she’ll react with a fresh thought. Total surprise can be dangerous, at least in the world of music. I don’t put a completely different idea from left field on the table. I react in the way I’m required to.

  Audiences who come to my concerts know that my concerts are not just about me. They are about the music that I represent and the musicians involved in that tradition. Recently, an MC, said in more or less these words when she introduced us on the London stage: ‘Zakir Hussain is accompanied by the sitar player Niladri Kumar.’

  That’s wrong. I could not correct her immediately because we were standing in the wings, but when we went on to the stage, I said: ‘It’s actually the other way round. I’m accompanying Niladri Kumar, that’s the traditional role of the tabla—to accompany. In the second half, the orchestra will accompany me and the tabla shall be presented as a solo instrument. Let’s see how it works.’

  That’s the right way of introducing the lead musician no matter who it is—Niladri Kumar, Rakesh Chaurasia, Sabir Khan, or Dilshad Khan.

  NMK: When you go home after a concert, how do you unwind?

  ZH: The unwinding has to take place. In the old days, you had a glass of water, took a deep breath, and a few friends would come to the green room and say, ‘Kya baat hai!’ [Wow! Excellent!] You felt grateful that it had gone well. You came home and sat down to eat. From this large gathering, there’s finally just you, your wife and your kids and you enter a calm environment. How shall I put it? You return to the womb in which you feel this comforting warmth, it just relaxes you.

  It’s when you’re in bed alone that the downturn from the high really begins and you start replaying the concert. I find myself dissecting everything, the good moments, and the not-so-good ones. It is very difficult for me to fall asleep immediately. I have to run the evening over and over in my head because I just need to—there are musicians who can move on instantly, but for me, it’s important to absorb what I have just done. After about an hour in bed, I give up trying to sleep, so I read a book or watch TV, and try to slow the mind down.

  My father was totally different. He would lie on his side with his head on the pillow and talk while tapping rhythms on his knee. I’d massage his arms, up and down, and he would quietly fall asleep. But Abba’s fingers would still be moving—he was still at the concert and in the moment when something good was happening.

  The whole concert is not necessarily the beginning and end of it all. There are only a few moments, which are gold, the real McCoy. When you’re alone you try and remember those moments and recall how they came about. Trying to repeat them never works either, they just happened because you did something, the sitar player did something and it all fell into place to become something magnificent.

  NMK: It’s magical for the audience to witness a moment when a performance rises to another plane. After so many years of interacting with audiences all around the world, can you gauge audience reaction easily?

  ZH: I think audiences are much the same everywhere. The world knows about the world today. There is nothing about Rwanda that people in Oregon can’t discover. You can learn about everything wherever you are.

  Gauging audiences today is more about my ability to plant a new thought in their mind. I have the confidence now to explore musical ideas that are more challenging in some ways—I don’t worry so much about what the audience thinks. You’ll find young musicians concerned about how the audience reacts. I was like that too when I was twenty or twenty-five—it was a whole different connection. I used to be direct, more eye to eye. In a solo concert, I told stories, created visuals, and did all sorts of stuff, and sometimes I even elaborated on an idea based on the reaction of the audience. It worked fantastically, but now I don’t even announce what I’m going to do. I just start playing.

  Here, I’ll take Ravi Shankarji’s example. From the late 1960s to almost the early 1980s, he conversed a lot with his audience. He talked to them about the music and joked with them. He became a little more closed later in life and I wondered why—it was not that he had run out of things to say—it was just that he probably thought to himself: ‘They know enough about me, Ravi Shankar, so I have the confidence that they’ll take this journey with me. I can now explore the depths that exist in music, as opposed to worrying: “Are they with me or not?”’

  I think you get to a point in your professional life where the connection with the audience comes from their familiarity with what you do.

  NMK: Are there some performances that you avoid?

  ZH: I don’t play at private gatherings, corporate events or weddings. I just don’t. Those are places where people come to socialize, to drink and perhaps have a meal. That’s not the way music should be heard.

  For me, it’s the concert hall or the theatre—people take their seats, the hall darkens and we musicians take our place. Now the audience’s focus is fully on the stage. I have often said that the first fifteen minutes of a concert are the most important because artists and audience are establishing contact and a zillion other things cannot happen at the same time. I don’t allow photographers to walk around when we start playing. I have always requested the organizers to kindly close the doors as soon as the concert begins, and not to let anybody in until there is a little lull and then latecomers can take their seats. They do that in Western classical concerts. It’s nothing new.

  NMK: Does it matter to you if the audience is made up of four thousand people or forty? Do you prefer a smaller audience?

  ZH: A small audience allows for intimacy. Music transmits better, especially traditional music, which requires interaction between audience and artist. If you’re within touching distance of each other and you have eye contact, the experience is something very special. When I’m talking with you, there should be that spark of understanding of what is being said. I look for that acceptance; my ego requires that my playing is getting across.

  When you are in a 4,000-seater, you have no clue what’s happening back there. The energy, the strength and power that a note has in the first or third row is not the same twenty rows back. You can hear the music, enjoy it, and even feel its depth in a large hall, but a fuller experience only happens in an intimate gathering—the kind that you have in a one-on-one conversation. It’s not unlike chamber music concerts in the Western classical tradition and you understand why these are sought after.

  When someone like Vilayat Khansahib or Bismillah Khansahib played in a small mehfil, talking and playing invariably came together: ‘Arey mian, yeh Dada ustad ki cheez hai, yeh main suna raha hoon, suno. Isme dekho yeh sur kaise lag raha hai.’ [I’ll play a master’s composition for you. How do these notes sound?]

  Intimacy is also important because we musicians can try out new things because we know we’re performing for like-minded people, and the reaction of that small gathering might legitimize what we happen to be working on.

  NMK: It sounds like the experience of listening to jazz in a club.

  ZH: The
small baithaks were exactly like that. It did not matter to the musicians that they were not getting much money because the audience was small, but they happily performed for twice as long as they would have perhaps in Birla Hall or Shanmukhananda Hall.

  Intimate concerts are definitely something that I personally look forward to. That’s why I love playing at Prithvi Theatre. I don’t get paid for the memorial concert, nor do I expect to be paid.

  NMK: You’re no doubt referring to Jennifer Kendal’s memorial concert that’s held every year on 28 February at Prithvi in Bombay. I had the good fortune of attending those events for two years running. Crowds of people queued up for hours before the start time because they knew they were in for a treat.

  Can you tell us something about the early concerts? I mean before you started performing in large city halls and auditoriums.

  ZH: We used to play in big pandals. You could hear the sound of the traffic and the trains going by. What I noticed was that the musicians would maintain eye contact with some people in the audience. I did the same thing too and that connection sort of spread to the people around them and behind them. It’s a chain reaction, a ripple effect.

  I think most musicians would agree that playing music could also be a visual experience. To me the emotional content of music requires visuals. When I’m playing, I see images, paintings, landscapes and animals. I see different human beings. Assimilation, analysis and emulation—all of this has to happen at the same time during a performance.

  NMK: I imagine you’ve played thousands of concerts over the years. I wonder if there’s a list somewhere of all your performances.

  ZH: I doubt it. I don’t even have photographs. In the early days, having a camera was a luxury, and as a tabla player, you know, we did not make much money. Now it’s different, we tabla players are not taken for granted.

  In the early days when we were going to play outside Bombay, we tabla players were asked to travel by train whilst the main artists would travel by air. That changed in my father’s time and now all the musicians travel together.

  It took about twenty years to get to a point where I could ask for something, tell the organizers that I needed this or that.

  NMK: Ask for something? What do you mean?

  ZH: Say, I wanted a good hotel room, or I preferred to travel by air—it took twenty years before I could ask the organizers. It didn’t really matter. Things happened in an organic way, but when they did, they stuck.

  NMK: Do you remember how old you were when you flew for the first time?

  ZH: I think I was about twelve. Abba and I were travelling from Bombay to Indore in a Dakota, those twin-engine planes. I remember going to the toilet and throwing up because I was not used to flying, so my father decided that we should take the train back home. So we took the metre-gauge all the way from Indore to Ratlam and from Ratlam we got the Frontier Mail to Bombay.

  NMK: Was it just you and your father? Did you talk a lot on the journey?

  ZH: The social skills of Indian classical musicians of the past were limited. They spent 98 per cent of their time with their music. It would have been great if Abba could have discussed politics, science, or maths. But no, it was always music. He could talk for hours about rhythms, melodies and the old masters. Even when Abba was asked to speak at a press conference, he would say: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t speak, only my hands can.’ But if he were asked about music, he would perk up and talk with ease.

  Performers must have a certain amount of ego—have that confidence to get on to the stage and strut their stuff. In a negative form, the ego creates friction. We are fallible as humans. Our greatness, if we are in any way great, is only as musicians. These are two different things. So that’s why some of the old masters, outside of their music, were not necessarily good husbands, good parents, or even of great value to the community. This is not meant as a criticism; it’s just that their commitment to their art was total.

  NMK: Have musicians always been respected by all strata of society?

  ZH: We must remember that they were socially unacceptable in the India of the 1950s and ’60s. They were seen as lower-class citizens and did not really socialize with the elite. Of course, musicians were respected and were asked to perform and so on, but they were very rarely invited into the homes of the higher echelons.

  Perhaps it was because musicians chose to talk only about music. Musicians of that era were very intelligent, smart and had a sixth sense—how else could they have transmitted their art form to others? So I think it was a personal choice to shun the idea of interacting with people on other levels. My father, Ali Akbar Khansahib, Bade Ghulam Ali Khansahib or Amir Khansahib—they were all like that. It was not that different in the film world of that time either. Film people talked only about the movies.

  Ravi Shankarji keeps coming up in our discussions—because he was the only person I knew then who could talk on any subject. Whenever we travelled together by plane, he would buy ten magazines at the airport—newspapers, magazines on fashion or film, Time, Newsweek, or whatever—and read them all during the flight. I started doing that too. I learned much more about language through reading than I had learned at school.

  NMK: Do you still read a lot?

  ZH: Absolutely. I read novels, newspapers and magazines. I read books on people in sports, in cricket, for example. I like reading but I guess I’m basically an escapist and so I usually read fiction. I like the Foundation series by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Those are my favourite.

  NMK: What about biographies of musicians? Do they interest you?

  ZH: I have read books on Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. They are considered biographies, but the musicians themselves were not involved. The books were written after the subject had passed away, so I don’t know how much of Miles Davis’s own thinking was in his biography.

  Ravi Shankarji on the other hand was involved in his book, My Music, My Life, from the first till the very last page. Everything that’s there you know was written under his watchful eye. He talked about his life and his music and it was clearly all him.

  I recently read Roger Federer’s biography, but it felt more about the guy who wrote it and what he thought of this great tennis player. Sure, the writer talked about Federer’s forehand and backhand and stuff like that, but I found nothing about how Federer saw life. Sometimes that happens with biographies.

  NMK: Did you find that frustrating?

  ZH: I think it’s misleading and not necessarily frustrating. My wife Toni gave me the book because she knows I am a Roger Federer fan. That’s why I read it.

  I’m a little apprehensive about biographies that do not involve the subject. If you read Muhammad Ali’s book, The Greatest: My Own Story, you can visualize Ali saying those things and you can hear his voice. For example, our conversation involves me, and the reader will know that.

  NMK: And poetry? Do you enjoy poetry?

  ZH: I like poetry. But reading it needs time. I like the idea of reading a Faiz couplet and trying to understand where the poet is going with it. I like Dylan Thomas, Keats and Wordsworth. T.S. Eliot is very good, but I think I prefer Urdu poetry.

  I grew up around Urdu poets, and so there is some peripheral insight into that tradition. When Majrooh Sultanpuri Sahib says, ‘Saari duniya mujhe kehti tera saudai hai, ab mera hosh mein aana teri ruswai hai’ [The whole world says that I have lost all reason because of you, if I were now to regain my sanity it would bring disgrace upon you], I think I understand the feelings behind his words.

  NMK: What language do you consider your language today? Is it Urdu or English? For example, what language do you dream in?

  ZH: Ah! For the first eighteen years of my life it was probably Urdu and the following few years it was very confused and now it’s mostly English. I find that if I have to give an interview in Hindi or Urdu, it takes me a short while to become fluent again. I am translating from English and that’s because I speak English all the
time. Many Indians I know also speak to me in English.

  For the most part, I think I dream in English. When I dream of my father and mother or other people who decide to join the dream, it’s in Urdu, the language that I remember them by. When it is just a dream, it’s in English.

  NMK: People say when we’re angry or sad we revert to a language in which expressing our emotions comes naturally. That language could be our mother tongue.

  ZH: If you have lived a life which has defined parameters, you usually revert to a particular language. But when you have a life like mine which is all over the place, I suppose it’s different. I have found myself at home in Bombay talking to Shaukat Apa, who looks after our home, in Urdu—it just comes out automatically and then I switch to English a few minutes later.

  NMK: I think personalities change when people express themselves in different languages. Would you agree?

  ZH: Yes, it’s a whole personality change. When I talk to Vikkuji [T.H. Vinayakram], the south Indian ghatam player, I speak to him in a south Indian tone. It’s not only the words but also the voice levels change. It is very interesting to see it happen.

  I was sitting in the living room the other day, here in Bombay, and my sister, Khurshid Apa, who is visiting from London, was talking on the phone to someone in another city in India and her voice rose about eight decibels! Her voice automatically went up. I told her: ‘Khurshid Apa, there is no need to shout. They can hear you very clearly. This is not an old phone!’ [smiles]

  NMK: You said you grew up among poets. Do they still count among the people that you meet in India?

  ZH: I enjoy meeting Javed Akhtar Sahib because the conversation invariably turns to music or poetry. It is not surprising that his views on poetry would be enlightening, but his insights on music came as a surprise to me.

  I did not have a close connection with Kaifi Azmi Sahib and Majrooh Sultanpuri Sahib. I saw them when I was playing rhythms for a film song by Roshanji and then by O.P. Nayyarji.