Zakir Hussain

Yeah.

Shakti with Zakir Hussein and with Derek doing with Alam Khan.

Um, you know, that, McLaughlin set that template up for a, you know, somebody who came out of the rock jazz tradition to then form an Indian music type group, and Derek is definitely inspired by that stuff.

There's no question.

You

know, Ustad Zakir Hussain ji is a great example, you know, for me, he was the God of Tabla.

i had the pleasure and the the great fortune to to sit with him once and i remember leading up to that that day he was it was almost like he was visiting me in my dreams you know

really

The different syllables mimic the drums in such a way that the dancer recognizes where there should be a heel or a soul strike, where a movement should be sharp or flowing, and where they can incorporate bells.

You can hear just how well the art of bol, which comes from the Hindi word to speak, matches up with the tabla in this performance where Ustad Zakir Hussain sings and plays drums at the same time.

If we travel farther east, we encounter the vocable tradition of kakegoe in Japan.

Kakegoe can mean a couple different things.

Right.

I'm not gonna play the same way or discuss or dialogue the same way with Zakir Hussain, with whom I played many, many wonderful concerts and albums, as I'm gonna speak with Joe Zavarel, who is a very different personality.

Right.

Who I might speak with, um, a younger musician who's had a college education and maybe is a little more, you know, in touch with contemporary styles and mores.

You can also hear it on percussion like tabla, which lives in the mid-range.

For example, Sangam with Charles Lloyd and tabla master Zakir Hussain has an amazing wealth of skin tone.

A related gain, but one I didn't expect, is the subtle but important way that the Nazare improves string tone on some classical recordings like the Mahler Fifth with Nelsons and the Vienna Philharmonic.

I still think many of these are tipped up in the violin range, but the Nazare makes them more listenable with unpacking, not filtration.

You know, if you were growing up in India playing drums, wanting to play more like... jazz and improvised music, there was really only one person doing it at the highest level.

And it's no surprise that Ranjit toured with John McLaughlin and the Fourth Dimension for many years, and also played with the great Zakir Hussain for many years, and had the chance to just hang out with Ranjit sir, be around him, intern at his studio, learn from him for about a year in Mumbai.

Just understanding his approach to drumming, understanding the way he brought in his Indian influences to a Western instrument had a huge impact on me.

And early on, I knew that there's great tabla players, you know, there's great mirdangam players, and I don't want to be playing tabla on the drums.

My mama, my maternal uncle, he was a tabla player.

He played with the best of the maestros in the world, starting from Pan- uh, Ustad Alla Rakha and, um, Ustad Zakir Hussain.

Um, my uncle, who's a painter, uh, he did not pursue painting as his profession.

When you spend your day-to-day with these people, you get exposure to such amazing stories, such amazing life philosophies.

They are very close to you, and they inspire you to pursue those things, kind of ideologies they stand up for, and you, you start relating to those ideas, ideologies.

Uh, legends, I guess they inspire you in a very different way.

When, when I look at Ustad Zakir Hussain, he's an absolute maestro.

He was, unfortunately, he passed away last year.

And my dream, dream, dream was to play with him.

To play with Ustad Zakir Hussain.

Which you can say, okay, I have done my purpose.

But I couldn't do that.