Obituary: Zakir Hussain (1951–2024)

India’s most celebrated tabla player, Zakir Hussain Qureshi, has died aged 73 of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease. He was recognised as a master of the double-headed drum that generally accompanies North Indian classical music and as an international artist in many fusion groups, notably Shakti. This Moment, the first Shakti album in 46 years, won a Grammy earlier this year. “The tabla has become a rhythm instrument of the world. It’s not just an Indian instrument anymore,” Zakir said. “It’s injecting rhythm into compositions worldwide.” More than anyone, Zakir Hussain is responsible for that.

Zakir was born in Mumbai, the eldest son of tabla player Alla Rakha Qureshi, the favourite tabla player of sitarist Ravi Shankar, with whom he performed at Monterey and Woodstock festivals in the 1960s. Zakir says his father sang tabla rhythms in his ear as soon as he was born. As well as learning tabla from his father, he attended an Islamic madrasa and a Roman Catholic day school. With tabla flowing in his blood, he also started working with Ravi Shankar, sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and others in his teenage years. He recorded a memorable concert with Afghan rubab player Mohammad Omar for Smithsonian Folkways in 1974.

In 1973, he co-founded, with guitarist John McLaughlin, one of the most successful Indo-jazz fusion groups, Shakti. They recorded three albums with violinist L Shankar and ghatam (clay pot) player Vikku Vinayakram and appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976 and ‘77. Zakir and McLaughlin also created the spin-off Remember Shakti in 1997 with bansuri flute player Hariprasad Chaurasia. The group subsequently included mandolin player U Srinivas and ghatam player V Selvaganesh, son of Vikku Vinayakram. Shakti reformed in 2020 with violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan and their 2023 release This Moment, which won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album this year.

Zakir also won two Grammys this year for As We Speak, a collaboration with Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Rakesh Chaurasia. He won his first Grammy in 1991 for Planet Drum with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and again in 2009 for Global Drum Project, also with Mickey Hart. With bass guitarist and producer Bill Laswell, he founded the group Tabla Beat Science in 1999. Their Tala Matrix (2000) album featured Trilok Gurtu, Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale. He also collaborated with George Harrison, Van Morrison and the Kronos Quartet.

One of Zakir’s most successful live projects was 2015’s Pulse of the World, which included Ganesh Rajagopalan on violin and Rakesh Chaurasia on bansuri flanked by Celtic musicians. They began as a full ensemble, but it got particularly memorable in its more intimate moments with Chaurasia’s solo flute swooping like a bird in flight and then duelling in imitative competition with Zakir’s tablas. His tonal range was amazing. The project toured across the US and India as well as the UK.

Dividing his time between Mumbai and California, Zakir worked on Bollywood films in his early years and several international films like Merchant Ivory’s Heat and Dust (in which he also appeared); he played tabla on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha.

In 2015, Zakir composed Peshkar, a tabla concerto which he premiered with the Symphony Orchestra of India and which they brought as a signature piece on their first UK tour in 2019. In it, he used the rhythmic patterns learned from his father. “People might think that I’m improvising, which I am ever so slightly, but the repertoire is one given to me by my father,” he said. “When I’m playing, I imagine that I’m calling on the spirits so they will come and inject their energy into the rendering of the piece, so it has their blessing and the spirit that it needs.”

As well as accompanying Kronos Quartet on several albums, including with Asha Bhosle on You’ve Stolen My Heart, he composed Pallavi, a string quartet written for them with each instrument playing in a different raga. Kronos’ David Harrington described it as “one of the most substantial additions to the string quartet repertoire in years”.

Just last year, he composed a triple concerto for himself on tabla, Niladri Kumar on sitar and Rakesh Chaurasia on bansuri with the Symphony Orchestra of India. It’s the first to be written for that combination of instruments, contains a dash of Bollywood and came across with panache as these are musicians Zakir was performing with regularly in his many and diverse projects. As a personality on the world stage, he will be much missed.