Zakir Hussain, an internationally renowned tabla player and composer who helped integrate the Indian classical sound into Western music, has died aged 73.
Hussain died Sunday afternoon in San Francisco de idiopathic pulmonary fibrosisa chronic lung disease, his family said in a statement.
Praised as “the greatest tabla player of his generation,” the statement said, Hussain throughout his decades-long career aimed to combine musical genres and came to be regarded as “a primary architect of the contemporary world music movement.”
For his efforts, Hussain has received accolades including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, India's most elite honor for performing artists, the SFJazz Lifetime Achievement Award and the Aga Khan Award, according to a statement from his family.
Earlier this year, Hussain became the first Indian to receive three Grammy Awards in one night.
“He leaves an extraordinary legacy cherished by countless music lovers around the world, with an influence that will resonate for generations to come,” the statement said.
Born on March 9, 1951 in Mumbai, Hussain learned his tabla playing skills from his father, Allarakha Khan, who served as sitar maestro Ravi Shankar's accompanist during the peak of Shankar's career, according to the Allarakha Foundation.
“A child prodigy,” according to his family, Hussain began studying with his father at age 7, a representative for Hussain confirmed. Like his father, he collaborated with Shankar, as well as other famous Indian musicians, including Ali Akbar Khan and Shivkumar Sharma.
After moving to the United States in 1970, Hussain greatly expanded his musical network.
“[Hussain’s] Groundbreaking work with Western musicians brought Indian classical music to an international audience,” his family’s statement said, “cementifying his status as a global cultural ambassador.”
Along with noted guitarist John McLaughlin, Hussain formed the fusion band Shakti in 1973, which produced influential albums such as “Shakti With John McLaughlin” and “A Handful of Beauty.”
“The encounters between jazz, rock and Indian music that took place between guitarist McLaughlin, tabla player Hussain, violinist L. Shankar and ghatam (clay pot) percussionist TH Vinayakram provided eye-opening opportunities to experience a breadth of music that reached far beyond the then commonly accepted musical orbits of the United States and Europe,” the late music critic Don Heckman wrote about Shakti in a 2000 article for The times.
Hussain also counted Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead among his closest friends and musical companions. The two collaborated on the albums “Planet Drum” (1991) and “Global Drum Project” (2007), the latter of which earned Hussain his first Grammy.
“Zakir Hussain was my brother for more than 50 years, my closest collaborator and my dearest friend. “Over the years, we have shared venues reserved only for those whose lives are totally immersed in drums,” Hart wrote in a statement to the Times, adding that the couple lived together for a time on their California ranch.
“[Hussain’s] The knowledge of the rhythms of the Western and Eastern world was unmatched. “He had perfect pitch and a complete memory for the most complicated rhythmic cycles,” Hart wrote. “Their instruments were like rain, dense sheets of sound played like blurs of lightning-quick fingers on small, tuned drums. With the skill of a surgeon, he weaved a rhythmic spell with each finger at the fastest speed imaginable.
“The world will never be the same without him,” he wrote.
In recent years, Hussain has served as an educator-in-residence at Princeton University and Stanford University, and in 2015, he was named a Regents Professor at UC Berkeley, according to his family's statement. In 1991 he founded the independent record label Moment Records.
Hussain is survived by his wife, Antonia Minnecola; her daughters, Anisa Qureshi (her husband, Taylor Phillips, and daughter, Zara) and Isabella Qureshi; his brothers, Taufiq Qureshi and Fazal Qureshi; and his sister, Khurshid Aulia.
