NMK: How many attend the yearly retreat?
ZH: We try to keep it to fifty, but invariably we end up having about sixty people. Beyond that number, we have to say no. Students come from India, Japan, Australia, Canada, England and Europe, and of course we have American students too.
I make it clear to them that we’re all students of the tabla. I don’t want them to say they’re my students because by default, they’re following my father’s line and could be messing it all up, so there’s no point. I tell them that I can guide them because of my experience, and answer questions if I am able. Toni has videotaped many of the sessions.
NMK: Your father taught you for many years, what’s that one bit of advice that you think was essential?
ZH: [long pause] The key advice he gave to me was to watch where the ‘sum’ is. In other words, if I play a rhythm cycle of sixteen beats, and the ‘sum’ is on the seventeenth beat, that’s the first beat of the next cycle, that’s where I have to arrive. Whatever rhythm cycle you play, and you’re creating a thought process, a path to walk on—you must be attentive to where you’ll arrive. The way he put it was: ‘Sum ko dekho’ [Be mindful of the ‘sum’].
Say, a guy is parachuting from a plane and he’s going to land in a circle on the ground that has an X marked on it. Everyone is watching him with their mouths open and as soon as he lands on the X, there’s an explosion of cheers and applause. Playing music and arriving at the point where you need to reach—the ‘sum’—is something like that. You can be playing and playing and if you don’t know how to round it off, you’ll get nowhere. You should not be stumbling through. Your approach must be clear and smooth, so the audience knows that you are now arriving at the ‘sum’ and they are part of the experience of touching down. In the Western world, they call it ‘the big finish’. If you have that big finish, everybody will be like ‘Ah!’ That’s what Abba meant when he said: ‘Sum ko dekho.’
NMK: Is that the same advice you give other young musicians?
ZH: That is the best advice. The ‘sum’ signifies a goal, a resolve. Unless you can tie a ribbon on the statement you’re trying to make, it does not complete itself.
NMK: Your father set up the Ustad Allarakha Institute of Music in Bombay in 1985 and your brother Fazal runs it. The Institute’s website describes the philosophy of the school as imparting the knowledge of the tabla, particularly of the Punjab gharana. Does Fazal closely follow your father’s school of playing?
ZH: I think Fazal follows it much more than I do. Because I travel around the world, I am able to use the knowledge that I was given—and like a piece of wax I can shape it into anything that I want, so that it works well with whatever I am interacting with.
As far as Abba’s school is concerned, Fazal runs it and teaches the students. Over the years, a few hundred students have studied there, but at any given time there are no more than thirty or forty. My brother has to transmit the knowledge as received by him. It is his father’s school. He is very focused and very particular about providing the kind of teaching that my father would have. That responsibility rests on his shoulders.
Taufiq has chosen a different instrument altogether. He does not play the tabla, but the djembe. It’s an African drum, and he has transposed my father’s teachings to the djembe. Taufiq has developed a new kind of hybrid language that combines these two languages. And although he uses the same material that he has learned from Abba, the djembe is nevertheless a different instrument, so Taufiq is not really tied to protecting the information as prescribed.
My brothers are both very beautiful drummers. I have to say that it was probably a bit more difficult for Fazal because he had to follow our father and then me. For him to make his place in the world of music was tougher, but he has done it.
For Taufiq, the difficulty was to play a totally non-Indian instrument, and yet play traditional Indian repertoire on it. He has formalized a technique of playing qaidas, relas, chakradar and paran on the djembe. Taufiq has started teaching this system to many devoted students, and who knows there might be a whole new voice to Indian drumming. In fact, Taufiq plays other percussion instruments too, including the duff, bongos and batajon.
Both my brothers have done very well and I am so proud of them. It’s fabulous. It’s not easy to have three brothers in the same family who play rhythms, and for each to find his own niche. We are not stepping on each other’s toes. And I am grateful to my father for encouraging us to define ourselves individually.
NMK: I believe Taufiq’s wife, Geetika Varde, is a singer?
ZH: Yes, she’s a classical singer. She studied with Smt. Manik Bhide. Geetika takes her singing seriously. I don’t think anyone in her family is a musician, but she chose to be one. She balances her duties as wife and mother, and is very careful that she makes sure that their son, Shikhar, is well looked after. Shikhar has turned into a very decent rhythm player and is already performing on the stage. Razia Apa’s son, Faizan, has also turned into a fine percussionist and composer for Bollywood films, and her daughter, Afshan, is an accomplished and award-winning film-maker.
Fazal’s wife is Birwa. She is an interior designer from National Institute of Design (NID), and is also a folk dancer. She has taught dancing and is currently producing a concert series in Gujarat at the UNESCO heritage sites. That’s another artist in the family. Their daughter, Alia, is studying ballet, and their son Azann is a very fine piano player. He’s not even twelve. The next generation is already on the move!
I am really delighted that they are encouraging their kids to be creative. It changes a person’s point of view when you have art inside of you. Your perspective on the world is quite different.
NMK: What are your thoughts on the present generation of Indian musicians?
ZH: Niladri Kumar is very good and so is Rakesh Chaurasia and Rahul Sharma—they are all very good. But it is not just hard, but also unfair of me to talk about only a few of the many talented young Indian musicians. It’s true that I have been able to perform with just a few of them, but my hope is that, very soon, I would’ve played with many more. There is a selfish reason on my part in wanting to work with the young geniuses, and that’s because I find their view of music deeply inclusive of the sonic world in which we exist.
When I was young, the information available to me about how music was spoken in other parts of the world was very sparse. The young musicians of today have so much information at their fingertips about music. They have grown not only learning Indian classical music, but also other relevant forms so that their musical expression is more universal. It is an evolved understanding of all musical forms and this makes these young musicians well-rounded artists at a very young age. I envy their grasp of the many art forms and can only imagine the genius level they’ll arrive at in a few years. To play with them in the near future—and with their help understand a new and fresh approach of improvising that incorporates a universal mindset—is an exciting thought.
*
NMK: Today’s session is taking place in November 2016 in Bombay. I am seeing you again after some months. You’re getting ready to travel to South Africa for a concert this week. How do you prepare for the concert at such a distance?
ZH: Before you came, I was telling Nirmalaji, my secretary in India, to inform the South African promoter about my technical requirements. How much space I need on the stage, what instruments I shall bring, how many microphone lines are required, etc. I’m playing with Rakesh Chaurasia, and haven’t played with him in South Africa before.
Playing in Africa is special because that’s where most of the rhythm traditions in the world have come from. The drum and dance belong to Africa. I have listened to the music of many great African musicians, including Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba from South Africa, and the Soweto Choir. There are so many excellent African musicians—I am thinking of Oumou Sangaré from Mali and Doudou N’Diaye Rose from Senegal who was a master of the sambar, a traditional drum. He passed away in 2015 and
was one of the most respected drummers of his time. A great percussionist Hukwe Ubi Zawose from Tanzania used to play many instruments and was known for a special kind of throat singing where the voice comes from the core of the main chakra, all the way through the throat and out, so it sounds like three people are singing. The Zawose family developed this particular technique, and it has stayed in this one family. Hukwe Ubi Zawose passed away recently, but his line continues. About four years ago, I invited one of his cousins, a blind singer, to perform at my father’s barsi in Bombay. He was a big hit.
These are some of the musicians that I know about. Africa has a beautiful and ancient rhythm tradition. So, I cannot just walk in there and think I’m interacting with people who know nothing about rhythm. In combination with Rakesh Chaurasia, we have to try and show how the musical worlds of India and Africa might relate to one another.
NMK: Have you discussed Indian music with African musicians? I wonder what they think of it.
ZH: Absolutely. I have played and worked with all the musicians that I have mentioned. They find the tabla is beyond their understanding in some ways, because it has gone into a scientific realm where the technique has been developed and refined, and there is much training involved. Whilst of the highest calibre, the dos and don’ts in African drumming are not as rigidly exercised. Playing rhythmic instruments in Africa is very organic. What I mean by ‘organic’ is that it comes from the earth—it is alive in the people. Similar to qawwali singers in Ajmer, who are not trained in classical music or vocal music, but have just grown up singing qawwali. It’s learned from childhood. I think the same applies to Rajasthani folk singers—they have that lilt in their voices, the quiver and flavour. A child of the Langa family in Rajasthan can sing in that style, a little kid of the Manganiyars has it—it’s in their DNA. Their music is healing.
Something you will notice about qawwali singers—and the same is largely true of folk singers in Rajasthan or in the Punjab—is that they often sing in a very high voice. That’s because their lives are largely spent in open fields, or on the plains and in the vast desert—they express themselves in those vast spaces—and so their voices project.
Folk singing often begins with the idea of controlling the vibrations and sonic waves so that the voice expands. For folk singers to restrict themselves to small proportions until you get to the point where it becomes majestic is unclear to them. In classical music, we do not do that at the start, and is probably where we need to arrive eventually. In other words, classical singers or instrumentalists develop a raga performance note by note, gradually moving towards a grand climax, whereas a folk singer would go right to the high moment of the piece. One should be aware, of course, that the performance of a raga is a long and arduous journey, while a folk song is a short, earthy experience. Folk singers may also ask why we need to write the music down? Is it not inside of you? Are you not already aware of it when you are two or three years old? Why do you have to practise?
Take the Soweto Choir—here you have eight or twelve singers singing a harmonic projection that is no different from a symphony orchestra. Where did they learn to sing Western harmonies and four-part harmonies? The singers have not been to music school, but have probably just sat around the fire every evening and sung. Their tradition of music has come down from generation to generation.
The interesting thing is that a trained classical or semi-classical musician in India needs to have a tanpura, or some kind of pitch identifier in order to sing. Without any kind of pitch identifier, the Soweto Choir can sing and sound as one, all the harmonies in place. They are naturally tuned to the pitch. They may not immediately understand that we need to find our way in the tonal world, in the rhythm world. We need to find our way to a downbeat where the ‘sum’ is—where the ‘one’ is—because as far as they are concerned, the ‘one’ is where they decide it is. You’re playing and at a point you feel like stopping, you stop. It does not have to be—1, 2, 3—and you stop at 3. That’s not how they think.
From the day they open their eyes, they have it. That’s why folk music is something that will last forever.
NMK: Does African music not have a classical music tradition?
ZH: What do you call classical music? Any organic form of music is classical. If you’re listening to a Benarsi kajri, it’s classical. Or a coil recording of Gauhar Jaan singing at a gathering for the Nawab of Rampur is also classical.
Do you know, the Western world, for the most part, does not think that Indian music is classical but ethnic? It is listed as folk in the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian in Washington DC. I remember when Ravi Shankarji talked to reporters in the West, he used to insist that they understand that our music was classical music. It has a system and rules and you have to learn it in a proper way. He would hammer it in and felt that it was necessary to do so.
As far as the West is concerned, there’s one form of classical music and that’s Western classical music. I guess they are the ones who categorized it as classical, because their music is notated and pre-composed; it has a system that has stood the test of time—and it is standardized, so that anyone can study it. But in Indian classical music, there are as many viewpoints as there are teachers, as many opinions as there are students. When you have such disparity, such conflict and such a difference in opinion, the music is not classical as far as the West is concerned. It’s folk or some such thing.
NMK: You have performed with so many musicians. Do you still play the tabla with as many as you did in the past?
ZH: I work with fewer musicians, and am lucky that I also enjoy spending time with them. My interaction with a musician must work on many levels. We have to fight and argue and be friends and understand each other. So, I am very involved in deciding which concerts I do. I rarely accept work otherwise.
There was a time when I played a lot because I needed to—the rent had to be paid. But in the last twenty years or so, I’ve become a bit more selective. I find that it helps me, because if you’re just a professional on hire, you may play a lot, but you are not interacting at all levels with the lead musician, and that’s not very exciting. It does not nourish me. It’s like being on autopilot. You go through the motions and that crushes the creative process rather than making it fly. There are times that you grow out of a professional relationship, not because you don’t want to play with each other, it’s just that the logistics have changed.
NMK: Have you experienced competitiveness between musicians?
ZH: Before Independence in 1947, as you know, India had several princely states and many of these had court musicians. One of the things that court musicians in almost every state would stress was that their music was the real thing. If a prince happened to be visiting another princely state, he would often take his musicians along, to hold a musical competition and prove that his musician was better than the other’s. This probably happened because the musicians themselves encouraged their patrons to believe that their playing was superior by saying: ‘The musicians of Rampur know nothing.’
When the princely states were abolished, the court musicians had to fend for themselves. Music had arrived on the stage, but many court musicians had no clue how to project their music to the ‘aam janta’, to ordinary people in rural and urban India. They were so used to performing in an intimate setting that was reserved for connoisseurs and royalty that as soon as they got on to the stage with an audience of three or four hundred, they were at a loss. So, it was the young musicians of that time like Ravi Shankarji, Vilayat Khansahib, Bismillah Khansahib and their associated tabla players like Abba, Pandit Kishan Maharajji and Pandit Samta Prasadji who could provide a musical experience for large audiences.
Today there is a greater camaraderie between musicians than there was years ago. As far as rhythm is concerned, it is a universal thing, so tabla players can easily accompany musicians of different schools, so there is work for all tabla players.
NMK: You mean tabla players don’t compete with
each other? Did you ever experience any jealousy?
ZH: They compete but only in terms of playing. It is no longer the case that if a tabla player is playing in my city, he’ll be taking my job—that’s not the concern. We tabla players have found a way to interact with one another and enjoy each other’s company. Some of my best friends are tabla players. Shafaat Ahmed Khan, a very fine tabla player from Delhi, gave me the bass drum [the bayan] that I was playing today. He passed away a few years ago.
You ask if I experienced any jealousy? Not really. Some tabla players have even told me that because I have reached a certain level, the drag has brought them up too. If I am paid 500,000 rupees, someone who was getting 10,000 rupees will now get 50,000. There’s a chain reaction and that’s great.
There is no longer an issue between us tabla players now. It’s a beautiful thing because I remember, as a young man, observing the tension between my father and his contemporaries, to the extent that when I would go to a city where another tabla player lived, I would be told not to go to his house or to eat what he might offer me, especially sweets.
NMK: Was there a fear that you might be poisoned or something?
ZH: There was that fear. In my thirties, I had gone to play tabla in Benares with Ravi Shankarji at a festival called the RIMPA Festival. He had a huge house in Shivpur, in the suburbs of Benares, and that’s where I was going to stay. At the festival, I was to accompany Ravi Shankarji, Birju Maharajji, Halim Jaffer Khansahib and another musician. When I was about to leave for Shivpur, Abba called Raviji and told him: ‘Do not let Zakir go and meet such-and-such tabla player. Make sure my son is protected.’
There were stories whirling around about a tabla player’s hand becoming frozen through black magic. Or another tabla player was given something to eat and he went crazy. Abba even believed that a bad spell was cast on him. He was supposed to play a duet with another tabla player, and was fine throughout the day, but in the evening, on the way to the concert, his arm suddenly went stiff. He may have just slept on his arm in a funny position, but you know how it is, there were some well-wishers who made matters melodramatic and convinced Abba: ‘Something fishy has happened. You know these people are capable of doing such things.’ These were the kinds of stories that prompted my father to warn Ravi Shankarji not to let me out of his sight.
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