Kolkata: Except during the pandemic, every winter Ustad Zakir Hussain graced the Swara Samrat Festival (SSF) in Kolkata since 2013. This year, he was supposed to perform at SSF in Kolkata the day he passed away in San Francisco in the US.
Hussain’s first Kolkata concert was in 1963. Impressed by the accompaniment of the 12-year-old Hussain at Mahajati Sadan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan gave him Rs 100. All his life, Hussain treasured that currency. Sixty-one years later, he was slated to accompany Khan’s disciple, Pt Tejendra Narayan Majumdar, on SSF’s third day. On Nov 9, Hussain’s secretary informed Majumdar that the maestro was “over-exhausted” and was prescribed a “long period of rest”. The festival was truncated to two days with hopes of a Feb date post-recovery.
“Besides his solo performances and fusion ensembles, he accompanied Pt Shivkumar Sharma, Rakesh Chaurasia, and Niladri Kumar at SSF. I initially performed with him in 1989. At SSF, he played with me twice. It is such an irony that we lost him on the day our third SSF concert was scheduled,” Majumdar articulated.
Just a week before leaving for India on Nov 27, tabla maestro Pt Swapan Chaudhuri spoke to Hussain over the phone. “By then, he ceased communicating with everyone. We discussed his health concerns and his fatigue. I mentioned that at our age, we need to slow down,” the Padma Shri tabla player recalled.
Chaudhuri got the news of Hussain being critical just before going to accompany Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at Nazrul Manch on Sunday. “Zakir’s face flashed every time I shut my eyes while playing. I have known Zakir since the 1970s. He addressed me as Dadabhai. In America, we live just two miles apart. He loved my cooking and if I prepared something, I would send Zakir was trustworthy, genuine, and spent a lot of time with his students. People attempted to emulate him. Profundity. It was painful for me to perform on Sunday,” Chaudhuri expressed. On Monday, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan posted on social media that Hussain’s contribution towards tabla and Indian classical music. globally is “truly phenomenal”.
The reverence Hussain bestowed upon senior musicians like Chaudhuri was noticeable. “I marveled at his versatility to adapt, embrace diverse cultures, and perform with equal finesse alongside a Brazilian percussionist or a Carnatic mridangam virtuoso. His legendary charisma was enhanced by the depth of his artistic substance. I have never witnessed him diminish any performer’s stature. on stage,” Pt Bickram Ghosh said. Majumdar noted that Hussain’s solo performances possessed the “richness” of classical music, “precision” of his talim, and remained “very communicative” with the audience. “While accompanying, he perceived the concert in totality and hypnotized all from the first beat he played when the ‘gat’ commenced,” Majumdar stated.
Ghosh emphasized that Hussain made revolutionary transformations in sound production utilizing conventional instruments and technology. “There was a subtlety of interpretation and execution yet with the projection that allowed the audience to connect with his music. That is a virtually impossible accomplishment,” Ghosh observed.
Music director Prabuddha Banerjee described him as a “consummate musician, not merely an Eastern classical instrumentalist virtuoso”. “He was a brilliant music producer who understood the frequencies, tonalities, and nuances of the instruments. He generated tones giving space to each instrument and yet leaving his own mark as a rhythm player,” said Banerjee, who first heard Hussain at a Shakti show in Jan 1983 at Kolkata’s ITF Pavilion. “He was creating sounds on the tabla, rhythm patterns, and fractions I never heard before. At the crescendo, I was amazed when he suddenly took L Shankar’s double violin and performed bass notes on the lower strings. As a film music director in ‘ ‘Saaz’, he scored peppy numbers without resorting only to classical music and blended them with the language of films,” Banerjee said.
Those without formal music training, who loved his music as much as his hair flowing in slow motion in a tea commercial, are sad too. Anumita Dutta Roy, who was awaiting Hussain’s concert, said, “Last year, his performance at Nazrul Manch was electrifying. I remember he wittily remarked he would be delighted to return if invited in 2024 too. Besides his music, I was captivated by his flamboyance and charismatic persona.”