I arrived at the Benares station and was taken straight to Ravi Shankarji’s house and was then promptly led into a bedroom and told not to go out. But I have a different kind of nature, so I was sulking and wondering what to do. I thought to myself, why do we musicians mistrust each other? Why do we keep each other at arm’s length?
Kamalapati Tripathi was the Union Minister for Railways at the time and his family home was right in the middle of Benares. His grandchildren, Abu and Anju, were friends of mine, so I called Anju and asked her to come and pick me up. Ravi Shankarji used to take a nap in the afternoon and while he was resting, I walked to the corner of the street and waited. Anju came in her Ambassador car with its official flag; I got in and asked her to take me to Kishan Maharajji’s house in Kabir Chaura.
That’s precisely where I was not supposed to go. We arrived there and I knocked on the door. ‘I want to meet Maharajji. Mera naam Zakir Hussain hai.’ [My name is Zakir Hussain.] I was asked to sit down, and a few minutes later, wearing a lungi, a bare-chested Maharajji entered. He was most surprised, but also happy to see me. He greeted me with great affection—it was as though a long-lost nephew had arrived. He offered me tea and sweetmeats. I told Maharajji that Abba had asked me to pay my respects. He was moved to tears. He asked his son Pooran Maharaj to join us, and I spent an hour with them.
When I asked for permission to leave, Maharajji wanted to know where I was headed. I said I had planned to pay my respects to Samta Prasadji, the other famous tabla player. ‘Haan, haan zaroor, naukar ko saath le jaao.’ [Of course. Take my servant along with you, he’ll show you the way.] They lived almost next door to each other but were said to be bitter enemies, despite being related and belonging to the same school of music. Samta Prasadji was in fact Kishan Maharajji’s uncle.
I went over to Pandit Samta Prasadji’s house and there was no problem there either. He was wearing a gamchha and greeted me warmly: ‘Wonderful, you’ve come home!’ All it needed was somebody to take the first step to break the ice. As a result, when Kishan Maharajji visited Bombay a few months later, he came over to our house. Abba and I were out that day, so he met my mother and said that he had come to pay his respects.
I’ll say again that most musicians today are friends. But there was a time when tension between musicians was high. It was said that the great singers Bade Ghulam Ali Khansahib and Ustad Amir Khansahib were rivals. It was also generally believed that Bade Ghulam Ali Khansahib did not sing a raga in its pure form, and had a thumri and light style while Amir Khansahib was thought of as the pure singer.
The two Khans lived in Palanpur, an area close to Opera House in Bombay. It was also home to the kothas and the baijis. Though these great singers lived in the same neighbourhood, they did not interact with each other—their students probably made the problem worse by talking up the importance of one guru over the other. Some students can create tension to prove that what they are learning is superior. But if you sat and talked with these great singers individually, which I have done, their mutual admiration was apparent.
NMK: What did your father say when he heard you had gone against his wishes and visited Kishan Maharajji’s house in Benares?
ZH: Raviji never told Abba about the incident. When I returned that evening to his Shivpur home, he said: ‘I know there’s no problem. Kishan is a friend of mine and so is Samta Prasad, but your father asked me to look after you. You should have some regard for his wishes. I will not tell him, but you should have cleared it with me.’
NMK: It was good of him not to have mentioned it. [pause] Many Indian classical musicians enjoy a huge following. Is there someone whom you feel is somewhat of an unsung hero?
ZH: The sarangi master Pandit Ram Narayanji. The sarangi is one of the most difficult instruments to play because it has three main gut strings, thirty-six sympathetic strings and a resonant chamber. It’s a hollow instrument. Those thirty-six sympathetic strings vibrate and resonate constantly, and if you do not hit a note precisely, you’ll sound way out of tune.
The sarangi traditionally accompanied vocalists, but eventually vocalists phased it out because the tone of the sarangi is too close to the human voice and there is a constant clash. The harmonium, which is more supportive of the human voice, took over.
Pandit Ram Narayanji made great sacrifices in his own career because he wanted the sarangi to be considered as a solo instrument for the stage, so he stopped accompanying vocalists and stopped playing for films, which earned him good money. In the 1960s, he decided to give it all up so that he could establish the sarangi on par with the sitar, sarod, surbahar and veena. So, he lost both film work and the opportunity of playing with great vocalists. But Ram Narayanji stuck to his guns and finally the sarangi did receive an elevated status. This helped sarangi players who came later, including Sultan Khansahib and Sabri Khansahib of Delhi and so on. People don’t talk enough about Pandit Ram Narayanji’s contribution. He was a very special musician.
Now there are about ten fine young sarangi players, including Dilshad, Sabir, Kamal Sabri and others. The sarangi has recently enjoyed a renaissance of sorts and the work that Ram Narayanji started and Sultan Khansahib followed—who could play the sarangi just as well—is being carried forward. You had Ravi Shankar–Vilayat Khan, and there was Ram Narayan–Sultan Khan.
NMK: There was another wonderful sitar player Nikhil Banerjee.
ZH: I have accompanied him many times. He was one of those musicians who had to suffer from the Ravi Shankar syndrome. Ravi Shankarji was so famous and a great marquee name that people did not look to Vilayat Khansahib, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee or Rais Khansahib, or even to Ustad Halim Jaffer Khansahib, who passed away recently.
These sitar players did not get much attention from the media or from people in general. The media was interested in talking to Ravi Shankarji because he was a megastar. It was just the way it was. Though I did hear that Bengali audiences preferred Nikhil Banerjee to Ravi Shankarji and even to Vilayat Khansahib.
I think Nikhil Banerjee consciously tried to create a very rounded tone that had a muted projection and was not sparkly and bright. It was a very soothing tone. When you listened to Vilayat Khansahib’s sitar, and if the sound system was not tuned right, it could sound trebly and sharp.
Ravi Shankarji could have sounded like that too, but he added a fifth low string to his sitar, a kharaj string, which Vilayat Khansahib’s sitar did not have. This meant that Ravi Shankarji could go from a very low tone to a very high tone—and the fifth string kind of compensated for the brightness. He bridged the gap between the sitar and the surbahar.
Nikhil Banerjee was an absolute genius of a musician. He was technically a very efficient sitar player and he could play fast taans and alaaps beautifully. He had that sparkle and dignified grandness. He learned music under Ustad Allauddin Khansahib, and for the most part was mentored by Ali Akbar Khansahib, whom he considered an important guide. If people wanted to hear something different, they gravitated towards Nikhil Banerjee because his musicality was of a very special kind and it had the influence of Ali Akbar Khansahib. He was a much-loved sitar player for us musicians.
NMK: And Pannalal Ghosh?
ZH: I was very young but I did hear his recordings. Pannalal Ghoshji wanted to take a folk instrument like the flute and make it acceptable as a classical musical instrument. He played a lot in films and made many songs memorable.
But the kind of boost that the film Goonj Uthi Shehnai gave Bismillah Khansahib and his shehnai, Panna Babu did not get, despite the popularity of the other Goonj Uthi Shehnai song that he had played for, ‘Main piya teri tu maane ya na maane’.
For Panna Babu to establish the flute as a classical instrument would have required many more years, but he sadly passed away in 1960 when he was only forty-nine. Then young Hariprasad Chaurasiaji came along and established a new status for the flute.
NMK: Technology has hugely impacted music globally. When did it start influencing Indian music?
ZH:
The impact of technology probably started in the 1950s. The first influence in India was seen in the recording studios where musicians of that time understood that technology would allow their music to reach audiences and could sound magnified tenfold.
The older generation of great maestros like Ustad Faiyaz Khansahib, Munir Khansahib, Omkarnath Thakurji and others believed that if they were asked to sing into a microphone—at a recording or concert—it would somehow draw away their voices and they would not have any voice left. They had this particular paranoia about technology. But the later generation of musicians including Amir Khansahib, Bade Ghulam Ali Khansahib, Begum Akhtar, Ravi Shankarji, Ali Akbar Khansahib and my father understood the benefits of technology.
When the ustads had learned the art of recording and how to use the microphone effectively, they realized that they could go back into the sound booth, hear the quality of the recording and fix it, if need be. They also saw the importance of having a sound system in a concert hall—this was important because we had graduated from baithaks to large stages. The early sound systems in concert halls were basic and did not have the kind of layering that became available to us. In the early days, the speakers just threw out volume—a crackling and sometimes a very shrill sound. But somehow the singers’ voices and the instruments did not get distorted, so audiences who were sitting in the back rows could now be reached and that was very good.
When I moved to America in the early 1970s and Mickey and I formed a partnership, I started working in his studio which was called Rolling Thunder and sometimes the Barn. I was one of the team who helped to set up the recording machines. I learned how to plug in microphones and how to use the soundboard. In that process, I discovered the kind of frequencies that worked best for Indian instruments and how they could sound better by using equalizing graphics.
So, naturally, I brought that information to the engineers who were amplifying the concert halls back in India, and when that happened, it allowed me to play my instrument differently.
NMK: Can you elaborate?
ZH: By enhancing, say, 800Hz on the graphic equalizer, I was able to lengthen the resonance of the tabla. And by adding 120Hz to the bayan made the bass sound more round and deeper, gave it much more punch.
I realized that I didn’t have to work so hard. I could use the frequencies and the strength of the volume available to me to enhance certain nuances of the instrument and try to create more melodic and sweeter tones. I could be subtle, and use the sound system to bring out the best possible tones with the least possible effort.
This was something that Ravi Shankarji knew very well. Later, Hariprasad Chaurasiaji, Shivkumar Sharmaji, Amjad Ali Khansahib and many others knew how to do the same effectively.
NMK: You’re saying that working with Mickey Hart allowed you to understand the sound of the tabla as projected through a microphone?
ZH: And how the amplification can bring to the audience the most natural possible sound of the instrument and make the best use of the amplifiers and speakers. By using the low end and the mids and the high end in a balanced format—how shall I put it? It can paint a multidimensional layered sound for the audience.
I didn’t want the tabla to sound very electric—or something like a mutant. I wanted to somehow retain its natural tones, and at the same time, enhance them. Look at it this way—when you listen to an instrument from five feet away, it sounds a certain way, but if you listen to the instrument with your ear almost attached to it, it sounds like a whole different world. You’ll hear the lows, the mids, the highs and all sorts of sounds. The resonance just comes through so beautifully and clearly when your ear is next to it. That’s what the sound system should do—bring the sound of the instrument to 5,000 people and yet sound like your ear is right next to the instrument.
NMK: To enhance the presence.
ZH: Without distorting the sound of the instrument.
NMK: And how does Mujeeb Dadarkar come into the picture?
ZH: When you know what your instrument should sound like in a concert hall and you’re on the stage, you’re hoping that you have a sound engineer out there who understands the electronic world, the sound system, the soundboard, and who knows the environment intimately. In addition, someone who can also analyse the sound of Zakir Hussain and his tabla, Fazal Qureshi and his tabla, Anindo Chatterjee and his tabla and who knows exactly what to do to bring out the tonal qualities specific to these different musicians.
Mujeeb has worked with musicians for years and has worked intimately with music itself. He has spent hours with Vilayat Khansahib and Bismillah Khansahib at Doordarshan, and Ali Akbar Khansahib during his concert tours. He has done sound for other maestros including Amjad Ali Khansahib and Shivkumar Sharmaji. Over the years, Mujeeb has understood how to correctly project the sound of Indian instruments all the way from the audience in the first row to the back row.
NMK: When did you meet Mujeeb Dadarkar?
ZH: I met him before we actually started working together. We used to meet on a regular basis when I was composing music for Rahul Bose’s film Everybody Says I’m Fine! Mujeeb was the sound designer.
NMK: The film was released in 2001. So, you grew close around that time?
ZH: We came to know each other better around then. I would tell him how the instruments should sound through the sound system and how I had arrived at my understanding of what needed to be done to achieve the sound that I liked.
Mujeeb and I often discussed things. Sometimes he would say: ‘This instrument was not made the way it should have been made. It’s not projecting the way it should.’ Just the other day, during the intermission of a concert, he said: ‘Your bayan is not sounding the way it normally does. I am not able to coax the kind of a tone you want.’ And the funny thing was that whilst I was playing, I noticed that the bayan had thinned out a bit and was not giving me the punch I needed. So, I swapped the bayan for another one, and then everything was fine. To have an engineer who could tell you this is fantastic. As long as it’s loud, most engineers just say it sounds fine. Mujeeb is more concerned about the quality of sound, and not just the volume. He is that sort of a sensitive engineer. Because he understands music and the sounds of the instruments, he believes he should help to project the right sound. I am lucky that he finds the time to help us out in this manner, and is of course a great friend and has a great sense of humour.
NMK: It sounds like he does not compromise either.
ZH: No, he doesn’t, and he will tell you exactly what’s needed. That’s why I have him. He will talk to the Kennedy Center team and say: ‘Sorry, this is the mic and soundboard I need. The stage riser has to be this high and the microphone stand needs to be this far away.’
He is also constantly on the lookout for new equipment. Just because we have arrived at a workable place, it doesn’t mean that it can’t get better.
NMK: At some concerts, we hear terrible feedback—that high-pitched screeching sound. Is that something that Mujeeb can correct very quickly?
ZH: Feedback is a common problem for Indian musicians. The reason why they ask the sound engineer to turn up the on-stage speaker volume is that they want to hear what the music sounds like in the hall. When the sound returns to the stage, it enters the musician’s microphone, and then goes back to the speaker, creating a cycle of sound, a loop that just runs into itself. Eventually the wires, or the sound lanes, cannot take it anymore and so it becomes one loud whistle.
The reason I am telling you all this is that I was exactly like the other Indian musicians. I wanted to hear the sound as loudly as it could be heard in the hall. But over the years I’ve realized that’s suicidal. You must trust the sound engineer to give the audience a great sound landscape whilst setting up a small speaker on the stage. That small speaker is not going to give you a gigantic sound, but it’ll give you enough to keep you in tune and in pitch and in time with your fellow musicians.
NMK: You know a lot about sound technology—that’s impressive an
d so useful. [pause] I hear that you give an average of 150 concerts a year, travelling the world all the year round—there must be a huge pressure on your time. What does time mean to you now?
ZH: For someone like Bade Ghulam Ali Khansahib, time was his servant. The same was true of Ali Akbar Khansahib. There was enough time for everything.
What does time mean to me? In this day and age, hoping that time is your ally is wishful thinking. I am not going to say that I have all the time in the world to do what I want to do. But I will say that time has been an opportune friend—I think of the time I was born, when I started playing music, the company I have kept, the people I was drawn to, the musicians I’ve accompanied, the kind of knowledge I have received—in that sense, time has been an opportune friend.
Today I can look back and say I have played with, and hung out with four generations of musicians. And the fifth generation is not far away. And I’m still here with some years left in me. It is amazing that my colleagues are also my peers. Amjad Ali Khansahib is only five or six years my senior, but Shivkumar Sharmaji, Hariprasadji, Jasrajji, are much older, and yet they are my colleagues. The difference is that they were in their thirties and I was eighteen when we started on a journey together.
NMK: Do you think time passes by too quickly?
ZH: Obviously, there is not enough time in the day to do everything I need to do, so I do get exhausted. Like right now, I am really tired, but we have to work on the book. So, we’re talking. I didn’t sleep last night. We finished the concert in Dubai at 11 p.m., went to the hotel, had dinner, packed and went to the airport at 2.30 a.m. We took the 4 a.m. flight, landed in Bombay and I had to settle all the other musicians I was travelling with into their hotels—there was a problem and the hotel would not allow Dave Holland to take his bass into his room. All sort of craziness was happening.
Zakir Hussain Page 14