You recently celebrated your birthday. Are there things that you would have liked to talk to your father about at this stage in your life?
ZH: We had a very fulfilling relationship. When I had to travel more frequently, we would talk on the phone, joke, laugh—talk about the movies and things. But I have a feeling the father-and-son relationship sort of stopped when he started to teach me. My passion for the tabla was what got a reaction out of him—that drew his attention, so if I did well, we had time together.
NMK: Was playing music a way of getting his attention and approval?
ZH: It probably was. When you have a larger-than-life figure like Abba in your living room, you want to make sure that every now and then his gaze falls upon you. You want an acknowledgement that you’re someone special, and he made me feel special.
My father and then my wife Toni—these two relationships are key to my life. My relationship with my mother also played a big role in shaping the person that I am. Amma has a lot to do with that.
NMK: In terms of a formal education, your Wikipedia page says that you studied at St Xavier’s College in Bombay. Is that right?
ZH: That was just for a little while, because I had to go on tour to Europe. There was a blinkered kind of an academic world in India in those days. You had three categories to choose from: arts, science or commerce, and that’s it. You didn’t have a course on ethnomusicology or anything like that. It did not exist, and it still doesn’t, although I hear there is some change in these areas of study.
NMK: Do you think it would have been useful to have a PhD?
ZH: It doesn’t really matter to me. But it does matter in academic circles. I have been asked to teach as a visiting professor in the humanities department at Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley. Yet I know they would hesitate to give me a permanent position because I don’t have a PhD, and have not been published.
It’s partly because they rely on funding and it looks good when you have people on your staff who are Dr So-and-So, Nobel prize winners, etc. So, in the academic world, degrees matter. But people who want to learn the tabla are not interested in whether I have a degree or not.
My daughter Anisa studied film at UCLA while getting her BA and I asked her why she decided not to study any further. She said: ‘Dad, I am getting the chance to work in a film unit as an associate producer. It’s a big experience for me.’ What she meant was that practical experience, especially in films, has greater value than a college degree in cinema studies.
Anisa worked on the 2005 film Waterborne, in which Shabana Azmi had a role. It’s an English-language film that was shot in California. Anisa was the one who made sure the film was on schedule and on budget. She has worked as a line producer on several films.
NMK: Do your daughters live near you?
ZH: Anisa and her husband, Taylor Phillips, live in Los Angeles, which is an hour’s flight away or a six-hour drive from our home. Taylor works in film and television production. He was first AD on Lost, Hawaii Five-O, Scorpion, and the new series of Fargo. He was recently working on a film with Sally Field and Kelsey Grammer.
They have a beautiful baby, Zara, who was born on 30 June 2015. I am a grandfather! Lovely Zara lights up my world these days. She was walking at nine-and-a-half months. Now she’s running, and we have to keep up with her. She says a few words here and there, Mama or book. Anisa stopped working for a while, but now she has started again and is editing and filming some documentaries.
Isabella has her own flat, which is a ten-minute drive from where we live. She is very busy teaching ballet and Salsa. She is also a stage choreographer for musical theatre and has recently worked on Kiss Me Kate and The Pajama Game, in which she also performed. Before that she was working on Fiddler on the Roof. She’s a very responsible kind of person. I know her line of work is a struggle, but I’m very happy that both my daughters are in creative fields.
Anisa and Isabella enjoy visiting India. They speak a little Hindi, but not too much. Because I was always travelling, and the little time I had with them, I did not want to spend time teaching them Hindi, so we spoke in English. The Ali Akbar College of Music has started a Hindi course, so Toni and Isabella have attended classes there. Anisa too.
NMK: What’s it like being a grandparent?
ZH: It’s the best thing ever for both Toni and me. You look at your granddaughter and you think there is no one like her, she’s the smartest and cutest kid in the whole wide world. At the same time, I know I’m biased.
I never thought that I would feel that life could begin again and it has. It’s like going into this little cocoon and coming out fifty years younger, in mind and thought. You feel a renewed vigour about living. And that feeling has come from my granddaughter, and that same feeling came from my daughters when they were born. It was great to put them in their strollers and take them for a walk. I would hold my head up high and think: ‘Look at me with my daughters!’ I would say hello to everyone who passed by, eager to share the joy that I felt. I could talk about them all the time—I felt the same way when I first started playing music. I thought that it was the best toy I ever had. I was eager to share my passion and it’s much the same thing when it comes to my granddaughter, probably even more so.
NMK: I am sure you want to be around your granddaughter as she grows up. America is clearly your permanent home. Was it difficult for you and Toni to buy your first house?
ZH: Absolutely. We only managed it twenty-two years ago. It’s not a big house, but it has charm. We wanted a separate dining room, a separate living room and three bedrooms. Most houses in America are kind of open plan with the living room and kitchen combined. We wanted the old style, so we looked for a Spanish stucco type of house.
It took us two years to find something that we liked. The house we finally bought is in San Anselmo, and it was built in 1927 with a deep old-style foundation. California is in an earthquake zone, and so having a strong house means hopefully it will not shake too much if there is a tremor.
San Anselmo is a beautiful, sleepy little town. George Lucas lives there and Star Wars and Indiana Jones were created there. In the middle of the town, there is a small park with statues of Yoda and Indiana Jones. Many musicians, artists and film-makers live nearby.
NMK: You were involved in film too.
ZH: I have acted in two movies, Sai Paranjpye’s Saaz and James Ivory’s Heat and Dust. The films came to me in an emergency situation—casting at the eleventh hour, and so I could not find anyone to coach me. When I was very young I used to watch Indian films. But you know I have not seen a single Hindi movie for twenty-six years. I don’t know why, they just do not interest me. I haven’t even seen Saaz.
Indian popular cinema caters to more or less 900 million people. Whether the lead character is from a small town, or a gangster or a romantic guy, he has to fit into a certain image of the hero. In Hollywood, when you portray a character, you are not dictated by the definition of a hero that millions of Americans may share. How a Hollywood actor sees the character and how he or she wishes to interpret the role are up to them and the film director. So, that changes things.
NMK: Do you mean that the Hindi film hero is largely an archetype and that matters above all to audiences?
ZH: That’s right. No matter how squeaky you look, you must appear on screen as a real man. So, the actor tries to make sure that those 900 million people watching him will say: ‘Yeah! This is a hero!’ The guy in Kanpur must say it, and the guy in Jhumri Telaiya must feel it.
There are certain Indian actors who do everything to make things look dramatic; and then there are others who present themselves as ordinary folk on the screen. I think natural acting is more difficult than making things seem larger than life. Dilip Kumar Sahib is one of the greatest actors in Indian cinema whilst Balraj Sahni was just being a normal guy on screen. When he played a farmer, he was a farmer. When he played a police inspector, he was a police inspector. He never overpowered the scene but allowed realism to c
ome through. That is important, but it’s not what Indian audiences seem to want.
I am reminded of a funny incident that happened to me in Madras about nine years ago. At the end of the concert, a film director came to the dressing room and said: ‘I want you to act in my movie.’ I replied: ‘Hindi movie or English movie?’ ‘Tamil movie.’ ‘But sir, I don’t speak Tamil.’ ‘Not a problem, we can dub you.’ ‘I don’t have much acting experience.’ ‘Not a problem, but can you dance and fight?’
Those were the two criteria that were important to him. It did not matter if I could act, or if I could speak Tamil, all that mattered was whether I could dance and fight! [both laugh]
NMK: Is there a film that makes you think—oh my God, this is amazing!
ZH: That would be Citizen Kane. It is a film I really enjoyed.
NMK: Which recent Hollywood film have you found uses music in an unusual way?
ZH: Birdman. The main instrument they used was the drum—dead sounding, no pitch, no tone, and no melody. The sound designer edited the drumming in a way that it became the film’s emotive voice—I never imagined that was possible.
The other film that had a powerful and subtle score was Gravity with Sandra Bullock. It has a very imaginative score. The story takes place in outer space, so how to incorporate space into the music? In 2001: A Space Odyssey, you had this big symphonic sound, but in Gravity they skilfully brought the silence of space into the music.
In 2000, the famous artist M.F. Husain Sahib was making his film Gaja Gamini, and he asked me if I would do the background music. My reaction was: ‘Oh, what an honour! Which studio do you want us to work in? What kind of instrumentation would you like?’ ‘I only want the tabla.’ I suddenly became apprehensive: ‘Two hours of film with just tabla—all the way through?’ That didn’t make sense to me.
So, I stepped back and said I was sorry, I did not think I was ready to do that. He went ahead with one of my students, the daughter of a friend of his. So, the film had a full score of tabla, apart from a song by the composer Vanraj Bhatiaji.
NMK: You have also composed film music—a medium in which music is a part of a visual experience and not a purely aural one. What must you bear in mind when composing for images?
ZH: Film music is there to articulate the movement of what is transpiring on the screen. It could be people walking from left to right, or looking at each other, or to underscore a close-up. Everyone has a different point of view about this, but for me the responsibility of a film score is to be like water in a flower vase. The water must not only hold the flowers in place, but also nurture them. That’s what music has to do for the narrative, and that’s why background music is the most difficult part.
Not all the old Indian music directors composed the background score, you know. They would think: ‘Dhun bana di aur phir arranger ko khada kar diya, ke bhai isko orchestra mein zara distribute kar do’ [The tune is composed, now the arranger should orchestrate it].
The two composers that I personally knew who composed the background music as well as the songs were Pyarelalji of Laxmikant–Pyarelal, and Pancham-da [R.D. Burman]. They made sure that the background music was the way it should be.
Hollywood composers usually do certain types of movies. John Williams, for example, scores the big blockbusters like Superman and Star Wars. Danny Elfman and Maurice Jarre are very interesting composers. I enjoyed hearing Jarre’s music in Jacob’s Ladder. It was a very disturbing film and his score helped to create that disturbing atmosphere. Bernard Herrmann has created amazing music in Vertigo and Psycho. They are excellent films.
Good film directors use music only when a scene needs lifting, that’s when the impact is stupendous.
NMK: What for you is a good example of a great film soundtrack?
ZH: John Williams’s score in Jaws—the characters are talking and there is no music, and then suddenly the sound of a tuba announces the menacing predator. That’s how to use music in a film like that. When you hear it, it should jump out at you, grab you and drag you into the water with the shark. The score of Jaws is extraordinary, it’s an alternating pattern of two notes, E, F—da ra da ra da ra—and then a third note, D, is introduced. That’s all it is.
In old films, background music was there only when needed. Composer Richard Robbins of the Merchant–Ivory team used music when called for. But watch any recent commercial Hollywood film and there is constant music, or a zillion bits of ambient noise—whoosh, whoop or whatever. Somehow it has become necessary to engage the audience in more ways than just the visuals.
NMK: You were the music director for all the Indian music in Bertolucci’s Little Buddha. How did you meet this great Italian director? Were you keen on composing for films?
ZH: I do not compose for many films. I only do them when there’s time and if someone asks me. I don’t have an agent out there looking for film jobs.
As far as Little Buddha goes, I was in California and got this call from a professor of music in Los Angeles and he asked me a couple of questions about the music in Buddha’s time and I said: ‘Oh yeah, probably this kind of instrument was used, etc.’ Nobody really knows what the music was then—it’s a myth really. I told him what I imagined it could be. The question of the film had not come up. He thanked me and hung up.
The next day the professor called back and said: ‘I asked you those questions because Bernardo Bertolucci is just finishing Little Buddha and they are putting music to the film in London and want someone to authenticate the music of that era.’ He asked if I was willing to fly to London for three days, listen to the existing background score and put forward my suggestions. I was not doing much at that time, so I agreed.
I arrived in London two days later and met Bertolucci. We watched the film and I told him what I thought about the music. Off the cuff he asked me: ‘What do you think should go here?’ I had my tape recorder with me with some music tracks on it, so I hooked it up to the TV monitor, we rolled up to the scene and then I lined up the music and played it: ‘How about something like this?’ I played two or three different tracks for him.
Then he asked: ‘Can you extend your stay for a week?’ And that’s how I ended up working on the Little Buddha score. But the icing on the cake was working with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sakamoto is a well-known Japanese composer who had worked with Bertolucci on four or five films, including The Last Emperor. He is also an actor.
A day or so later, we started recording at Angel Studios with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. They charged about £86,000 for two days. We played some of the music on a keyboard for Bernardo. Then the sheet music was laid out and the musicians started to play. First scene—fine, second scene—fine.
Numbers usually identify a background score: Music 1, Music 2, Music 3, etc. These are known as cues. If there are eighty-six cues in a film, you know where the music will be placed according to the number. Thirty-four cues were planned for the orchestra on the first day. Some music pieces were ten seconds long, others fifteen seconds, and the longest piece was about forty seconds. Towards the end of the second day, we got to cue 23 or 24. Bernardo was listening to the music and suddenly said: ‘No, this is not working.’
Ryuichi Sakamoto and I were perplexed and asked him: ‘Bernardo, what’s the problem?’ ‘It’s just not right, it’s not the way I had imagined it.’ We did it all over again, and in the process, we went overtime, and so the £86,000 became £94,000. But he was still not happy. It did not matter to him that money was being spent. Eventually, Bernardo said: ‘Maybe I am overdoing it. Here is Buddha, deep in meditation, trying to understand what nirvana is, and I am adding grandiose music to underscore an intimate experience.’
Believe me, even after spending all that money, he asked us to use one cello and one flute—Rakesh Chaurasia played the flute. So, the same composition that the orchestra was playing with all the harmonies, etc., ended up being played on cello and flute.
We rehearsed the piece and came up with the melodic stuff that n
eeded chiselling. We then played it as the film was projected on the screen. Before anyone could say anything, Bernardo said: ‘Now take the same two instruments and re-record cues 12, 15 and 18 with cello and flute.’ He had edited the whole film in his head. It did not matter to him that all the orchestra musicians were just sitting around. He did not feel compelled to use them, nor did he think of the rising costs. Neither was he afraid to abandon a grand heavenly sound that was originally planned for the scene in favour of the simple sound of the cello and flute. No, he would use what worked for the film.
NMK: He must have wanted the scene to evoke stillness.
ZH: Yes. But originally, he had thought there should be a million voices inside Buddha’s head—he is struggling to empty himself of all excess baggage, so that he could zero in on the light or whatever. So, that’s why the orchestra—the million voices. When we were trying it out on the keyboard, it sounded all right, but when the full orchestra played the music, it did not match the mood of the scene, and Bernardo did not want to turn his film into yet another Hollywood extravaganza.
Bernardo had made the right decision. But what really amazed me was that he knew exactly which cues he wanted to re-record. He knew the story inside out—he had lived with it for a long time. You learn from his kind of focus. If I look inside myself or you look inside yourself, there is always some sort of doubt and uncertainty. When I get on to the stage, even now, I am not sure what’s going to happen. When I get off the stage I’m like—was it okay?
A truly learning experience is seeing someone like Bernardo Bertolucci who has vision, knows exactly what he wants, is in total command of his craft, and can tell you with full confidence: ‘This is it.’
NMK: You give me the impression of being a decisive person too.
ZH: If there’s something that matters to me, something that has a very unique place in my heart, it is not easy for me to take a snap decision. Otherwise, I decide things quickly. I think it’s because I was not raised with the idea that leading a musician’s life is conquering Mount Everest. Learning and playing music was a daily routine, an everyday event. I practised, played cricket and gilli danda, went to school and came home—‘Arey Zakir, aa khaana kha le. Khaana-waana kha liya?’ [Zakir, come here and eat. Have you already eaten?] It was just a normal life. It was not as though I had to bathe, chant mantras and then sit down to play the tabla. It was never like that. The simplicity of the whole process was instilled in me from a very young age. Tabla playing was woven into my life.
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