Zakir Hussain, the internationally famend tabla participant and composer who helped combine the Indian classical sound into Western music, has died on the age of 73.
Hussain died Sunday afternoon in San Francisco idiopathic pulmonary fibrosisa continual lung illness, his household mentioned in an announcement.
Praised as “the best tabla participant of his era,” the assertion reads, Hussain has aimed to fuse musical genres all through his decades-long profession and has come to be thought to be “a chief architect of the modern world music motion.” .
For his efforts, Hussain has been rewarded with accolades together with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, India’s most unique award for artistes, SFJazz Lifetime Achievement Award and the Aga Khan Awardbased on his household’s assertion.
Earlier this yr, Hussain grew to become the primary Indian recipient three Grammy Awards in a single night time.
“He leaves behind a unprecedented legacy loved by numerous music lovers all over the world, with an affect that may resonate for generations to come back,” the assertion learn.
Born on March 9, 1951, in Mumbai, Hussain discovered his tabla drum-playing expertise from his father, Allarakha Khan, who served as sitar maestro Ravi Shankar’s accompanist throughout the top of Shankar’s profession, based on the Allarakha Foundation.
“A toddler prodigy,” based on his household, Hussain started finding out together with his father at age 7, a consultant for Hussain confirmed. Like his father, he collaborated with Shankar, in addition to quite a few different well-known Indian musicians together with Ali Akbar Khan and Shivkumar Sharma.
After shifting to the United States in 1970, Hussain expanded his musical community considerably.
“(Hussain’s) groundbreaking work with Western musicians introduced Indian classical music to a world viewers,” his household’s assertion mentioned, “cementing his standing as a worldwide cultural ambassador.”
Together with the well-known guitarist John McLaughlin, Hussain fashioned the fusion group Shakti in 1973, which produced influential album reminiscent of “Shakti With John McLaughlin” and “A Handful of Beauty”.
“The jazz, rock and Indian music encounters between guitarist McLaughlin, tabla participant Hussain, violinist L. Shankar and ghatam (earthen pot) percussionist T. H. Vinayakram supplied enlightening alternatives to expertise a breadth of music that reached far past the then generally accepted musical orbits of the United States and Europe,” the late music critic Don Heckman wrote about Shakti in a 2000 article for The instances.
Hussain additionally counted Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead amongst his closest mates and musical companions. The two collaborated on the albums “Planet Drum” (1991) and “Global Drum Project” (2007), the latter of which earned Hussain his first Grammy.
“Zakir Hussain was my brother for over 50 years, my closest collaborator and my dearest buddy. Over the years we have now shared seats reserved just for these whose lives have been utterly engulfed by the drums,” Hart wrote in an announcement to the Times, including that the couple lived collectively for a time on his California ranch.
“(Hussain’s) information of the rhythms of the Western and Eastern world was unparalleled. He had excellent intonation and complete recall for essentially the most difficult rhythmic cycles,” wrote Hart. “His devices had been like rain, dense layers of sound carried out like lightning-fast finger blobs on small tuned drums. With the flexibility to a surgeon, weaved a rhythmic spell with every finger on the quickest velocity possible.
“The world won’t ever be the identical with out him,” he wrote.
In latest years, Hussain served as an educator in residence at Princeton University and Stanford University and, in 2015, was named Regents Lecturer at UC Berkeley, his household’s assertion mentioned. In 1991 he based the impartial file label Record moments.
Hussain is survived by his spouse, Antonia Minnecola; his daughters, Anisa Qureshi (her husband, Taylor Phillips, and their daughter, Zara) and Isabella Qureshi; his brothers, Taufiq Qureshi and Fazal Qureshi; and his sister, Khurshid Aulia.
