Tabla Legend Zakir Hussain on Abbaji, Music & Being ‘Semi-Retired’

Zakir Hussain, 68, talks about life lesson from Abbaji and how semi-retirement is working out.

The Quint caught up with Zakir Hussain to talk about his father, Allah Rakha and growing up in a musician’s household

(Photo: The Quint)

“And I have to thank my lucky stars, that I didn’t have to be sat down, it didn’t have to be forced on me, simply because it was there all the time for us to hear, to sample and to absorb the information.”

Zakir Hussain

The Quint caught up with tabla legend and renowned percussionist on the sidelines of the opening of Indian Music Experience, Bengaluru’s first and only music museum, to talk about what music means to him and growing up in a musician’s house.

Zakir Hussain has been awarded the Padma Shri in 1988, the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1990 and has also been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship, one of America’s highest honours. Hussain was widely considered a prodigy when he started performing at 7 years, and started touring four years later.

‘Lucky to Grow Up in My Father’s House’

Recollecting his childhood, Hussain said that music was everywhere, all around them in his father’s house and did not have to be forced on him.

“I didn’t have to be sat down, it didn’t have to be forced on me, simply because it was there all the time for us to hear, to sample and to absorb the information,” he said.

Conversations about music would start at 3 am, he said, and the day would consist of a series of musical experiences and learnings, from stutees and vandanas to hymns in church.

“We talked about Lord Ganesha, Saraswati, Lord Krishna, learnt the stutees, learnt vandanas, whatnot and everything which was part of our routine. And then went to the madrasa and learnt Quran, and then went to the church. And did our hymns before we went to the class to study. So, all this information kept coming to me like a natural process and it was never ever forced onto me with the idea that this is correct, the other one is wrong,” he says.

Hussain’s father Allah Rakha ensured that music was a very natural part of the daily routine. “My father was very calm and cool about it. There was no cane, there was no any kind of pain or anything. It was just, it was made to be a normal process... it was just part of your daily routine,” he recalled.

‘Music Has No Boundaries; Not Locked Up in a Safe’

Hussain credits his universal view of music to his father and how it was ingrained in him from childhood.

“I always believe this universality has been one of the great boons that was afforded to me from my very childhood. Music is something that does not have any boundaries, it does not have fences. It is not locked up in some kind of a safe, it is something that is vibrating through the particles that fly all around us, its in the airways, its in the trees.its in the flowers, it’s everywhere. That is what I’ve learned, I’ve learned that the living and breathing cosmos, its air, its pulse, its voice is all music,” he said.

Enjoying ‘Semi-Retirement’

The maestro quips that being in semi-retirement means that he’s down to performing 110 shows instead of his usual 200-240.

“I’m spending a little more time at home documenting, trying to piece it all together for the next generation, as to whats available, whats not and so on. So that’s what I call semi-retirement. And then I’ll get to semi-semi retirement, like the Sri Sri Sri’s, semi-semi-semi will continue,” he signs off.