RockOm

Zakir Hussain is a world-renowned, Grammy award-winning percussionist, world musician, and master of the tabla, the popular Indian drum. Zakir has amassed a wealth of awards and accolades and has recorded and performed with many of the world's greatest musicians, including Yo Yo Ma, Bela Fleck, George Harrison, and John McLaughlin, just to name a few.

Mr. Hussain met up with RockOm's Trevor Harden and Tom Crenshaw in the tiny mountain community of San Anselmo outside of San Francisco in September. While leisurely strolling through downtown, Zakir shared about the town's rich musical history and the feeling of community that has led many musicians and Hollywood celebrities to make San Anselmo their home. This interview begins about an hour later with a conversation already in progress as Zakir, Trevor, and Tom, settle in for a longer discussion in Zakir's office at Moment! Records. As the RockOm guys share about a concert they caught the night before featuring Bonnie Raitt, Crosby and Nash, Jackson Browne, and others, Zakir reminisces about his past interactions with several of these performers…

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Zakir: We'd be all converging at Mickey's [Mickey Hart, The Grateful Dead] ranch in Nevada in '71-'73 for jam sessions. David Crosby would be walking in and Steven Stills would be there and Gracie Slick, everyone would show up and hang out. Some were just sunning naked outside the barn where the studio was; some were just walking in the fields. It was an interesting time.

Tom: Most of my musical interests come from that period, the '60s and early '70s.

Zakir: For me it was a major change because I came from India, which in terms of visibility is a conservative country. Even when people have to step out to go to the store, they have to put on proper clothes. You did not step out in your "jammies." [laughs] Here [in America] you just stepped out whether you were wearing anything or not.

We'd just play music anywhere. This was so unusual for me. [In India] I would have to take a shower, say my proper prayers, light the incense and everything in front of my instrument by the altar, and then sit down to play the drums. Not in jeans or t-shirts, but in proper garb. No shoes, no nothing – just sit down and focus and play the instrument. Here you're around in the sun and you have your drum or guitar in your hand. And you're walking around naked or topless, with a glass of wine or beer in your hand… it was a whole different connection to creativity than what I was used to in India. It took a little getting used to - just to relax. The condition at the [ranch's] swimming pool was that everybody had to be swimming naked - no bathing suits. So I never swam. I just could not relax like that. It just was not in my upbringing.

One thing that was interesting about the creative part of it was that you got to know your music and your instruments intimately. They were not just modes of worship or meditation or yoga. They were also friends, twins, buddies, lovers. There was that whole concept of getting to know your instrument in a different manner so that your mindset changed. So you could relax into your interaction and connection and plug in with your instrument and your music.

Trevor: And you don't feel like you lost anything by taking this more casual approach?

Zakir: No, because I had been practicing day in and day out for hours in front of my teacher and away from my teacher, for hours on end for 16 years before I arrived here. So that was already in there. I was open to suggestions, I was open to the idea of relaxing and allowing a different kind of thinking into music. And I think that helped me in the long run because it was an interesting balance between a connection with the tradition - and what went with that package in terms with your connection with it, your treatment of the instrument, the music, your behavior – and the relaxed part of it, where the instrument had a voice as well. In India, the idea was: here's your instrument, here's the repertoire, learn this, play this repertoire on the instrument and see how you can embellish it, within the required rules and drawn up dos and don'ts.

You arrive here [in America] and you look at the instrument and say, "Okay, so I'm doing this, but what is the instrument capable of? What else can it do?" In other words, let's take it around the corner and see what is possible with the instrument. The instrument wants to speak. It was a kind of a contradiction because we believe in India that every instrument has a spirit. But in setting up parameters to our discipline, we were not allowing that spirit to have a say. The spirit just sat in the instrument, or slept in the instrument, and watched all this stuff being played and improvised on it. But it itself had no say in how it should be done or what else it could be and so on. There's that concept of looking into the instrument, say in a Zen method of meditation on a flower and seeing the whole world in it, that kind of connection into the instrument, where you not only touch the instrument but you do not tell the instrument what to do. You allow the instrument to transmit to you what should be happening and you make a connection that way.

That was the kind of atmosphere here: a sense of wanting to discover, wanting to find more, wanting to see what else is out there. So a three day jam session was not out of the question. The longest I remember was four days – really, four days! We were just playing constantly, there were at least 2 or 3 people playing, keeping the music going and people drifted in and out. I remember waking up, I was in the barn and had fallen asleep. I woke up and Jerry [Garcia] was playing the guitar, and Crosby was on the rhythm guitar, and Mickey was in the corner on the drums. There were other people asleep or relaxing when I woke up… that's what was happening. I woke up and immediately went on the instrument and starting playing. The discovery, the trying to find out, trying to get to "the more," getting the instrument to speak to you, that's a whole different way of looking at creativity which did not exist in India. That's a major lesson I learned and also was a break-out of the old way of praying and meditating and worshiping.

Trevor: You had mentioned the spirit in the instrument; could you elaborate on how Indian spirituality and classical Indian music are intertwined?

Zakir: I have to say that when it comes to playing a concert or performing for a number of people or being on stage, I do not impose the idea of spirituality through music onto the audience. I simply don't do that. For me, it's a very personal thing. My connection to the beings that have gone before, that have touched that instrument before, that have laid their blessings on it, it's just between me and them. And I hope that my connection with them is so strong that an aura of it appears anyway when I'm on the stage and playing and if people are so attuned, will lock into it and feel it the way I'm feeling it. Because my main function as a musician on stage is to entertain. So, I will do that. If I am to seek spiritual enlightenment through music with others, then it will be with my students, my fellow brothers of music who I'm playing with in a room, like the Sufis call "zikir." We will play and it will get to a point where people see the same light at the same time and that magical moment will be arrived at and experienced and the connection will be made between us that will never be broken, ever.

That being said, our great gurus of old have taught us that this music has its roots in divinity. That means that music emerged or was given as a boon to mankind, at least in India, by the gods and goddesses who existed at that time and so have become a constant part of our lives. Like Lord Krishna with his flute, Saraswati with her vina, Lord Shiva with his damaru. If you look through the statues and the paintings of gods and goddesses in their various forms, they all have at least one little instrument with them. So we believe this is a boon, it comes from them, it is a blessing and must be treated as such – this is why you take a shower, you go to the altar, you sit and practice, you do it that way. For great many centuries, the music stayed in the temples. And then, it somehow found its way to the courts and struggled between being a connection to God and an entertainment art form. It kept struggling until 1947 when India achieved independence from Britain and all the principalities were gone. And so now there were no jobs for court musicians anymore. So what do they do? They had to find a way to live so they brought the music to the stage; so Indian music as an entertainment art form is only that old. It really started to find its way in front of the audience, to communicate to them, to interact with them, to connect with them and to simplify things enough for them to be able to understand and attach themselves to the music in the '50s. It is still trying to find a balance between being a spiritual form of music and being an entertainment form of music. The old gurus and masters, they still want to keep themselves connected to that old way of thinking. What the new generation wants to be able to play the music for the sake of playing the music.

But, if you look at me, when I get on the stage to perform my music, whether I'm playing in a night club, in a concert at Golden Gate Park, a big festival outdoors, or anywhere, my preparation towards arriving at that point where I will hit my first note on the instrument is the same as it has always been. That has not changed. I will still go through that whole process of cleansing myself, focusing myself, and putting on my traditional garb. I will not allow shoes on the stage, I will not allow any kind of outside influence. I want to approach my instrument with the idea that I am in the presence of those beings. And then, once I have approached the instrument and established that connection with myself and them and paid my respects to them, then I open up and start to enjoy the music in a more open manner. That's why you find Indian music is very meditative in the beginning. It's within itself, it develops and then it opens up because that whole first part is for the gods, the gurus, or the masters. [You] establish that connection, pay those respects, and then move on.

I have worked with a hell of lot of musicians and have seen them observing and also diligently following the traditional ways of connection. It's the same: they will wear what's required of them, they will get on the stage and they will start in that manner… and then they will boogie [laughs]. We are still in that transitional zone but the connection of each individual musician with the spirits, it's something that I said earlier: when you make that contact and you see that same lighted path and you walk down that path with your fellow brothers and musicians, that contact cannot be severed ever. It's made. That's why I'm playing with Airto Moreira, the late Hamza Al-Din, Mickey Hart – those guys, for the last 30 years. That connection was made! That connection was made with John McLoughlin 34 years ago and it's still there – and with all the other old musicians of India whom I've been working with. And I'm still working with them because that light was seen, that connection made, and it will never be severed.

Click here to see PART TWO of this interview with Zakir Hussain, where he speaks about the spirituality of rhythm and the drum, the blend of Eastern and Western music, and much more.

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Article edited by Andrew Hoogheem

Photography by Susana Millman

Tags: California, creativity, India, John McLaughlin, Mickey Hart, music, Percussion, San Francisco, spirituality, Tabla, Zakir Hussain

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