Zakir Hussain

by Nasreen Munni Kabir

  So, this is how life is at the moment, I do know I have chosen it to be so. I am not in a position to complain and shouldn’t. Eventually I am the one who says yes. In that sense, time is my ally and my hurdle. I am thinking of that famous Ray Cummings quote: ‘Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.’

  NMK: That’s a great quote. Dealing with time pressures is difficult. May I ask what makes you angry?

  ZH: Ten or twelve years ago, I used to get angry more than I do now. Seven out of ten things that I would like to happen do happen nowadays. So, the need to be angry has lessened and I also realize that anger accomplishes nothing. When you get older, you realize that. But once I cross seventy, I’ll turn into an irritable old man. I am sure that will happen. [smiles]

  When I started working in America as a teacher, I was teaching people about an art form that they did not grow up with. It had to be drilled into them and that required a lot of patience. Then I joined Ali Akbar Khansahib’s music school where I had about forty students and taught them individually for six days a week, from ten in the morning to nine at night. That’s when I understood that patience is something I needed to have. Even now, when I mentor, I try to explain things in great detail. In India, we did not question our teachers. But I believe I must explain what was inexplicable about thirty-five years ago. It’s a responsibility I take seriously.

  As a person, I have become far more patient over the years and that has happened thanks to teaching.

  NMK: Was musical notation taught at your school?

  ZH: We had a class in Western music at St Michael’s. That was so unusual. The teacher taught us Portuguese songs because he was from Goa. I remember playing the tabla with some Christian kids who were studying music because their parents were film musicians. In fact, a group of us represented our school on a show on All India Radio. I even acted in a school play and played the tabla at school concerts.

  You asked about musical notation? I can read Indian notation, and I can read some Western notation. We do not need to look at music sheets to play, and therefore the practice of reading note by note in real time as you are performing is not part of my musical upbringing. But if I looked at sheet music, I can tell E-flat from C-sharp.

  NMK: How did you go about writing your symphony?

  ZH: We now have tools like the software Sibelius. It is named after the famous Finnish composer. You take a midi keyboard and run it through to your computer, play the notes you want and the computer will print them out. Sibelius can assign the melodic line to a particular instrument and tell you whether that instrument has the range to execute the melodic line you want. If the instrument does not have the range, it will suggest another instrument. That kind of help is available now.

  I can play the piano. Two days ago, I was playing some chords at rehearsals with Sanjay Divecha and Avishai Cohen, and Sanjay asked me: ‘Zakir Bhai, where did you learn all these chords?’ I said: ‘I just play as I hear the tune. I can logically presume that this note works with that note, and if E is equal to B, B is equal to C, therefore E is equal to C.’

  If you are a computer programmer, you can be a music composer today. You don’t have to know about music—that’s what’s happening with a lot of DJs and remix artists. Many don’t have what you may call formal musical education, but they have an ear for music and are very good with computers.

  For a classical khayal singer, for example, Raga Malkauns has to be sung only in a certain way. The composer A.R. Rahman can take Raga Malkauns and create a harmonic element in it, which may not be prescribed in Malkauns, but it will sound beautiful. So, that kind of sensibility is advantageous to someone like me who is writing a symphonic piece, because I am not bound by the dos and don’ts of the Western classical world.

  NMK: I went to hear you play at the NCPA recently. Your camaraderie with the jazz musicians that you were performing with was electric. I am talking about your concert with Avishai Cohen, Sanjay Divecha and Abhinav Khokhar.

  You also mentioned that you’ll soon be doing an album with Herbie Hancock, the great jazz musician. Do you know him well?

  ZH: I had the privilege of hanging out with Mr Hancock in the 1970s when we were touring with Shakti. Many bands toured in the summer jazz circuit in Europe and so did Shakti. In those days, the band managers would pool resources and sell the concert as a package to the organizer or promoter. Your band, my band, his band were all put together, and this meant cutting down on costs, hiring buses, travelling together and sharing hotel expenses, etc. So, Herbie Hancock’s band, Shakti and the Billy Cobham/George Duke’s band toured together. At some point, Weather Report joined us too.

  That’s how I have a long association with Herbie Hancock. We toured and then we all moved on. Every now and then we’d meet and do projects together. Like three years ago, Herbie, Carlos Santana and I played together at the Hollywood Bowl in LA and in Istanbul two years ago on International Jazz Day. Mr Hancock wants me to help him finish a record that he’s doing.

  NMK: Do you find that you have a different kind of relationship with a jazz musician, as opposed to an Indian musician?

  ZH: For me it’s kind of the same because I grew up in both worlds. Sometimes people ask, where did you grow up? I don’t consider my first eighteen years in India as where I really grew up. It was a protected world from where I occasionally stepped out and travelled and performed, but mostly I was at home being looked after like a prince. I was thrown into the deep end and had to find my way when I was eighteen and had just arrived in America. That was really the point from where I broke the shackles of being a young spoilt Indian kid and tried to grow up in the world of jazz and rock and pop. I managed to get into that life seamlessly and did not suffer a culture shock. It was all quite natural. I was lucky that way.

  NMK: I know you have a hectic schedule. Do you have a team that supports you?

  ZH: I was pretty much on my own in the early years in America. I was not a star or a well-known person and had very few concert opportunities, so I couldn’t afford an assistant or a road manager. Basically, I was doing all that myself. Travelling in buses, sitting in cramped economy seats, and carrying the tabla—that’s where the wear and tear has affected the body.

  Ravi Shankarji was probably the first Indian musician who had a staff of some sort, and later a management agency looked after him. In India, you don’t usually have managing agents, but secretaries and personal managers. A manager’s protection of the artist is sometimes interpreted as a display of power. The secretaries of some Indian stars are regarded as Hitlers.

  The great singer Mohammed Rafi’s brother-in-law, Zaheer [Ahmad], was his secretary. Nobody liked him because he was very protective of Rafi Sahib. Many people thought it was Zaheer who did not allow Rafi Sahib to sing for less money. But looking back, one can understand that Zaheer was just looking after Rafi Sahib’s best interests, and he was doing what this great singer could not do himself—saying no—and keeping at bay certain things that needed to be kept at bay. It was obvious to people that their relationship was deep because within six months of Rafi Sahib’s passing, Zaheer died. He was heartbroken because they were so close.

  From 1986, when I began to tour extensively with Abba, my wife Toni took over the administrative part of my life. That was a godsend. By the early years of the millennium, it became very difficult for Toni to do all that, plus run the house, the recording label and look after our girls. She was not able to concentrate on her dance. In the meantime, I had become more popular and several management companies approached me. We went to New York and had meetings with different people and finally settled on IMG to manage me. They have been running my life for the last ten or eleven years in America and Europe.

  In India, I have a secretary, Nirmala Bachani. She is efficient and very protective. She’s nice and very honest and she cares. It’s rare to find somebody who does not prioritize her personal agenda. Sometimes I feel a little bad for Nirmala that maybe she should have expanded he
r horizons and managed and taken care of a roster of musicians. To her credit, she has never complained and does not seem to feel that she should expand. For almost fourteen years, she has been there to watch my back. Some people do have ambitions, and want to make a lot more money. But Nirmala is on a different shelf. I am very lucky in that way.

  NMK: What about Shaukat Apa who looks after your Simla House home? She has history written in every line of her face.

  ZH: Shaukat Apa is family. Her job is to cook and make sure the house is kept clean. If she doesn’t want to cook, she doesn’t have to. She has been with us since she was a baby. Her mother and her grandmother were with us from the Mahim days. Shaukat Apa’s sister lived with us too and then she moved to UAE to work. As long as my mother was there, Shaukat Apa was provided for, and after my mother passed away, I decided that Shaukat Apa should have a salary because I am not always around to look after her.

  So, Nirmala oversees my business affairs in India, and Shaukat Apa runs the house in the way she wants. I don’t have a driver, but I have a car service that I use and they have assigned a driver to me who is always with me. There’s also Rocky who cleans the flat under Shaukat Apa’s watchful eye. He has a lively personality. He’s very nice and very responsible. Rocky recently needed some money for his sister’s wedding and I gave it to him and he has paid it all back. You look at this kid and you can see he has integrity.

  NMK: I am wondering what makes you happy, other than your granddaughter?

  ZH: Well, let’s see. Being with my family makes me happy. A good concert makes me happy, when my fellow musicians and I create an interesting musical moment. Watching a beautiful game of tennis makes me happy.

  NMK: And when you’re performing, are you someone else?

  ZH: No, it’s the real me. It’s like being at home with your wife and you are utterly yourself. I have a similar relationship with the spirit of music—I don’t feel the need to hide behind anything. When I sit and talk about social things, I may give off a whole different persona, but as a tabla player, I am who I am.

  We are fortunate that we musicians can be ourselves. It’s a glorious moment when we are able to open up in front of the audience. At the same time, you also have to be crazy to want that spot. You must have a large ego.

  NMK: A large ego? Why?

  ZH: Oh, absolutely—whom am I kidding? I love the attention. I love the adulation. It’s a great feeling, and as a child I loved it too. When I was playing, it was like—oh, everybody is looking at me and clapping. I am the centre of attention.

  NMK: You believed the adulation?

  ZH: Oh yeah, I’m sure I did, till I was sixteen. At sixteen I got a really bad review—the music critic and musicologist of The Times of India, Mr Mohan Nadkarni, essentially said that I had all the technique, but had not grown as an artist. Yeah, it was harsh. I had already been playing professionally for four years, and so the critic was looking for some forward movement, and not for the same old package. At first it destroyed me and I got very upset and very sad, and then it made sense. It totally did.

  I had to find a way of reinventing myself, rediscovering myself. It was important for me to prove that critic wrong. Some years later I actually thanked Mr Nadkarni for making me rethink things because that’s when I decided to go for a chilla.

  NMK: Can you tell me about the ‘chilla’?

  ZH: It’s also called ‘chilla katna’. It is associated with Sufis and musicians. A chilla is a kind of a spiritual retreat. Some people take a vow of silence for days, and others go to a remote place to be alone with their music or meditation. They say if you do three chillas in a lifetime, it completes the rituals of becoming a man of music, not just a boy of music—like a native American climbing a mountain and plucking an eagle’s feather or something.

  NMK: A kind of rite of passage?

  ZH: Yes, a kind of rite of passage. During the chilla, you’re alone and have to fend for yourself, eat certain foods and have no contact with the outside world—concentrate totally on what you do. If you’re a tabla player, you play tabla. If you’re a singer, you sing, etc.

  Music in its basic sense is vibrations. So, if you play for fifteen to sixteen hours in a day, you sense a whole lot of vibrations that have an effect on you. You can get into a trance and in that state of mind you end up revisiting experiences that you have perhaps buried. If you have been through a rough time in your life, dark thoughts resurface. So you come out of the chilla either feeling totally broken or totally enlightened, it depends on your state of mind.

  When I decided to do my first chilla, I was about sixteen. Normally I was supposed to get permission from Abba, but I couldn’t, because he was somewhere in England, touring with Ravi Shankarji. I headed off to the shrine of a Muslim saint called Haji Malang. The shrine is a three-hour climb from Malangadd Fort near Kalyan. It was not the first time I had been there. As a child, my mother had taken me there because I was always ill. She took a mannat at the shrine that if I got well again, she would distribute sweetmeats, equivalent of my body weight, to the poor. I know that she kept her promise.

  The maximum time of a chilla is forty days: that’s really Biblical, isn’t it? But I only stayed sixteen days at the shrine. During that time, I recited rhythms, which could sound like chanting, and played tabla for hours and hours every day. And then one day I had a visitation. I really did. When I returned home, far from being downhearted, I felt elated.

  Some weeks later, Abba returned home. My mother told him that I had just taken off. He was absolutely furious. What if something had gone wrong during the chilla? When Abba calmed down, he asked me what I did there. I explained that I had spent hours practising and added: ‘You know I had this visitation. An elderly gentleman came and recited a rhythmic composition to me.’ I told Abba the composition was very clear in my mind and I played it for him.

  He went very quiet and then started pacing up and down. Abba had this habit of putting his hands behind his back when he walked. After a little while, he said: ‘Play it again.’ I did. I don’t know what was disturbing Abba, but I could tell that he was struggling to understand what I had experienced.

  Later that night, he said: ‘This is a very old composition. I have not taught it to you, and I know that you didn’t know it before. Most of my students don’t know it either. Describe the man to me.’ I described the person I saw as best I could—a white-haired dignified-looking man wearing a pagdi, a long kameez and salwar. Abba said: ‘This composition is by Baba Malang, and your description fits the saint’s description. Maybe you had a visitation from him.’

  These things are inexplicable, and I don’t like to talk about it because I am never really sure.

  NMK: But it did happen?

  ZH: It did happen. Every year on Guru Purnima, the day you honour your guru, I fly in from California. All Abba’s students get together, and we have a little gathering to honour our teacher. Everyone plays something. There have been times around Guru Purnima that I have gone to sleep and the next day when I wake up, I find that a new rhythmic idea has popped up in my head. If belief has a place in your life, you accept, if not, you take it as the inexplicable.

  NMK: What prompted you to do a second chilla?

  ZH: I was in Seattle, studying and working at the University of Washington. I was hanging out in the ethnomusicology department with my colleagues. There was Mr Abraham, the African music teacher, the Indonesian gamelan ensemble and some other friends who attended the jazz class.

  But then you know how it is—a stage comes in your life where you are creatively empty, the box has nothing left. It happens and it’s a frightening place to be in. Sometimes the workload keeps you so occupied with the responsibility to be creative on stage every night that you do not realize that your mind has gone blank. Suddenly, you can’t think of anything fresh to present and, as a defence mechanism, you go on autopilot. This is not uncommon; it just means that you did not have the time to step back and recharge, to clear your mind from t
he thousand or so combinations and permutations that you have used so far. In short, you have run out of GB space and need to wipe the mind’s hard drive so that you can load up new software to write new programmes!

  That’s why I decided to do a second chilla. I did not see any friends during those days. I taught at the university for about two-and-half hours and then spent the rest of the day alone in my small apartment. I had to cut off from everything to find my way again.

  I also realized that you could be anywhere if you wanted to connect to your inner self. I was in Seattle and not in a hut in Punjab or at the Haji Malang shrine. But I was convinced that if my focus was sincere and genuine, the spirits would help me to find my way out of the quagmire.

  I believe that this second chilla gave me new insight into how I could expand my instrument’s reach. It made me realize that adulation and applause are not the centre of creativity. Being true to yourself and to your abilities, standing behind your efforts without the fear of criticism should be the goal. This unshackling of the mind prepared me for my impending association with Ali Akbar Khansahib, Mickey Hart, John McLaughlin and other greats.

  NMK: Would you attempt a third chilla?

  ZH: I don’t feel the need to do a third chilla. Somehow I believe that all the years of working, interacting, learning, travelling all around the world have been like a chilla. I think there is something very mysterious about doing a chilla, but half the time, people do it because they want to get away from everything.

  NMK: Do you meditate?

  ZH: What do you call meditation? Centring your focus? Making sure that your body aligns itself so that the core has been strengthened. Ironing my kurta is meditation for me. Every crease is very clearly seen to, every little shal in the pyjama is being watched, it’s not vanity. It’s just concentration. Some people have beads, others have a meditation bowl in which they rotate a stick and it vibrates and creates a tone and they focus on that. I have my kurta and the iron.