Lord Krishna, Hinduism\u2019s compassionate god of divine love, is often portrayed with a flute in hand. Perhaps that has something to do with the story that when he cut a large drum in half, producing two hand drums for rhythmic accompaniment, which is a mythical origin for the tabla, these small hand drums came to be treated like a back-up rhythm section. Melody was the star. In classical Indian music, sitar masters were stars, and tabla players traveled second class and were poorly paid.<\/p>\n
A father and son changed that. Alla Rakha was the loyal tabla partner of Ravi Shankar, who created an international rage for raga in the 1960s, holding sway over the likes violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the Beatles and Philip Glass. His son, Zakir Hussain, an equally great tabla guru, expanded tabla allure into jazz, swaths of pop music, film and television. He became one of the most convincing early proponents of the world music movement, readily fitting in tabla with flamenco as well as with African, Indonesian , Afro-Cuban, you-name-it drumming. Hussain and his tabla\u2019s most warmly human sounds have entered the wide world\u2019s soundtrack.<\/p>\n
Monday will be the first anniversary of Hussain\u2019s death, at age 73, from a pulmonary illness. His last work was a collaboration with Third Coast Percussion, which commissioned \u201cMurmurs of Time\u201d in celebration of the Chicago ensemble\u2019s 20th anniversary. It was the only work by one of the world\u2019s greatest percussionists for a percussion ensemble. Hussain lived long enough to record \u201cMurmurs\u201d with the group but not hear the final mix, let alone play it in public.<\/p>\n
The recording with Hussain, \u201cStandard Stoppages,\u201d along with other percussion works, came out just in time for 2026 Grammy nominations and shows up in \u2014 and should be an obvious shoe-in to win in \u2014 the category for chamber music\/small ensemble performance. In the meantime, Third Coast has been touring \u201cMurmurs\u201d featuring a Hussain disciple, Salar Nader, as soloist. Last weekend Third Coast brought the engaging CD program to a sold-out Nimoy, as part of the CAP UCLA season.<\/p>\n
Nader, who was born in Hamburg to a family of Afghani refugees and grew up in California, began studying with Hussain at age 7. He is one of the most prominent of the next generation of tabla players poised to take the next step for their instrument, begging the question of whence tabla.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, the path taken by Alla Rakha and Zakir Hussain was a lesson in how to create something new and widespread out of the devotion to a profound, yet arcane, learned, physically demanding and extraordinarily complex tradition.<\/p>\n
Rakha may have been a formidable traditionalist, so much so that tabla was his whole education, but he found pleasure (and income) writing songs for Bollywood films in the early 1950s. When he returned full time to classical Hindustani music, working with various soloists, he eventually hooked up with Shankar, with whom he then worked almost exclusively. With their quirky and exciting question-and-answer dialogues, the duo riveted the the Monterey Jazz Festival and San Francisco\u2019s Fillmore Auditorium (where I heard them regularly as a college student), to say nothing of Woodstock. No one wanted one without the other.<\/p>\n
Hussain (his name was given him by a wandering holy man who showed up at his parents\u2019 door one morning shortly after he was born) heard tabla in the womb. His father lovingly tapped delicate rhythms on his baby boy as he held him in his arms. By his early teens, Hussain was already a Mumbai sensation.<\/p>\n
However strict a teacher, Rakha believed in individuality, carbon copies being for the waste bin. And Hussain grew up not only on Hindustani music but the records by the Doors, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane his dad brought back from his West Coast appearances with Shankar. It wasn\u2019t long before Hussain found himself on the West Coast as well, heady with its 1960s pop music scene. He became friends with Dead drummer Mickey Hart. He met George Harrison, who convinced him that there were thousands of rock drummers but no one with Hussain\u2019s tabla talent.<\/p>\n
Even so, Hussain became a tabla master of all trades. He acted, engagingly, in the 1983 feature \u201cHeat and Dust,\u201d along with contributing to the soundtrack. He became part of world-music-jazz ensemble Shakti, founded by guitarist John McLaughlin. Hussain was the drumming glue for Hart\u2019s percussion revolution begun with \u201cPlanet Drum,\u201d the recording that brought world music into the world of pop.<\/p>\n
Before long, Hussain became a fixture in jazz (playing with the likes of Herbie Hancock and Charles Lloyd). He showed up on the soundtracks of \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d and made Ryuichi Sakamoto\u2019s score for \u201cLittle Buddha\u201d work. He played bluegrass with B\u00e9la Fleck. He counted Michael Tilson Thomas, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi among his fans.<\/p>\n
But while Hussain put tabla center stage, his real accomplishment was as a collaborator. Indian rhythm is incredibly complex and sophisticated. Its own center is religious practice. Tabla players sing the rhythms as well as playing them, the most difficult and astonishing form of chanting there is. The drums can produce melody and, while mellow, come alive with a speed that dramatically raises the pulse rate.<\/p>\n
In \u201cMurmurs of Time,\u201d Hussain created a kind of tabla concerto. The ensemble spends much of its time on mallet instruments, setting the stage, keeping a melodic line or pulse going. The opening is an awakening, with group vocalized rhythms, but that is something only a tabla player can really pull off. \u201cMurmurs\u201d is ultimately through with a rousing tabla and drum set dialogue at the end, reminiscent of his father and Shankar\u2019s gripping finales. <\/p>\n
Hussain wrote \u201cMurmurs\u201d for himself, working closely with Third Coast over a year. \u201cWrote\u201d isn\u2019t quite right. He didn\u2019t write down his own part; he needed room for freedom and improvisation. Nader, very impressively, learned the demanding solo from the recording, and he then, as Hussain would have expected, added his own character.<\/p>\n
That is something that will need to grow over time. On recording, we have a deeply moving farewell. In concert, \u201cMurmurs\u201d transitions into something new, while, as yet a work in progress, still honoring the guru.<\/p>\n
In a discussion on stage after the concert, Nader, who lives in Los Angeles, emphasized his own interest in what\u2019s next for tabla. He too has worked in film, including participating on the soundtrack for Mira Nair\u2019s \u201cReluctant Fundamentalist.\u201d He\u2019s had fling with Broadway with \u201cThe Kite Runner.\u201d He said he\u2019s ready for almost anything. He\u2019s worked in hip-hop, noting tabla is a natural \u2014 and it is, \u201cPlanet Drum\u201d having been an early influence.<\/p>\n
Tabla is here to stay, and Nader bears watching. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lord Krishna, Hinduism\u2019s compassionate god of divine love, is often portrayed with a flute in hand. Perhaps that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51078,51074,48,52,51,47,50,49,51076,51085,51082,18987,51077,51080,3239,51075,51079,51081,51084,315,51083],"class_list":{"0":"post-92749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-alla-rakha","9":"tag-hussain","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news","16":"tag-murmurs","17":"tag-only-work","18":"tag-ravi-shankar","19":"tag-recording","20":"tag-salar-nader","21":"tag-soundtrack","22":"tag-stage","23":"tag-tabla","24":"tag-tabla-great-zakir-hussain","25":"tag-tabla-player","26":"tag-third-coast-percussion","27":"tag-time","28":"tag-wide-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}