Zakir Hussain Learned the Tabla From His Father Alla Rakha, Played the Fillmore East With Ravi Shankar in 1970, Formed Shakti and Won Three Grammy Awards in One Night in 2024

Zakir Hussain was born in Mumbai on 9 March 1951, the son and pupil of the tabla master Alla Rakha, and at the 66th Grammy Awards in 2024 he won three trophies in one night. The Associated Press and NPR both reported that he was the first Indian musician to win three Grammys in a single year. The President’s Secretariat had already notified him for the Padma Shri (1988), the Padma Bhushan (2002) and the Padma Vibhushan (2023). He died in San Francisco on 15 December 2024, aged 73.

A father who sang him rhythms

Hussain’s father, Alla Rakha, was one of the best-known tabla players of the twentieth century, and the National Endowment for the Arts says he was also his son’s teacher. The tabla is a pair of hand drums played by one musician. The Endowment’s statement dates its development to the fourteenth century.

NPR reported that Alla Rakha sang rhythms into his newborn son’s ear in place of the usual prayer, and that Hussain’s mother objected. The Associated Press says the formal lessons began when the boy was seven. The Endowment says Hussain gave his first concerts at seven and began touring at twelve, and the Tribune adds that by seven he was playing in school concerts. The sources differ slightly on what happened at seven, a lesson or a concert, and agree on the age.

The man who taught him

Alla Rakha was born in Phagwal, a village in Jammu about 80 km from Lahore, according to the Tribune’s report of his death. He learned tabla from Kadar Bakshi of the Punjab gharana (a hereditary school of playing) and ragas from Ashiq Ali Khan of the Patiala gharana. He joined All India Radio in Delhi as a staff artist in 1940, composed music for Hindi films, and played with the vocalists Pandit Jasraj and Bhimsen Joshi, the sitarist Ravi Shankar and the shehnai player Ustad Bismillah Khan.

The musicologist Ashok Da Ranade wrote in Gentleman magazine in June 2001 that the tabla was not as highly regarded two centuries earlier as it was in 2001. In his account, Alla Rakha was one of the people who changed that, turning a Punjab style of playing into a full gharana. Ranade also counted at least forty Hindi and three Punjabi films with Alla Rakha’s music.

The Tribune reported that Alla Rakha died of cardiac arrest at his Mumbai home on 3 February 2000, aged 81. He had played at Pandit Jasraj’s seventieth birthday celebration the Sunday before. Ravi Shankar’s own story is told in our article on the sitar, and the shehnai player who shared Alla Rakha’s stage has an article of his own.

Nineteen, New York and the Fillmore East

The Tribune reports that a performance in New York with Ravi Shankar launched Hussain’s career when he was nineteen. NPR dates his move to the United States to 1970. The IMG Artists biography, which came from his management, places his first American concert at the Fillmore East in New York City, with Ravi Shankar, and the Endowment’s statement says the same. None of these pages gives the date of the concert.

NPR lists George Harrison, Van Morrison and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead among the musicians he worked with in those years, and the jazz saxophonist John Handy. Relix, in a 2022 interview, quotes Hussain on the recording he made with Hart in 1974 and 1975, called Diga. Relix also describes a nonstop jam of nearly four days in Hart’s barn in California around 1972, which Hussain, then eighteen or nineteen, attended.

Shakti and the drummers’ circle

According to the Associated Press and NPR, Hussain formed the jazz-fusion group Shakti with the English guitarist John McLaughlin in 1973. The Tribune names the other founding members as the violinist L. Shankar and T. H. “Vikku” Vinayakram, who played the ghatam, a clay pot used as a drum. The Endowment says the friendship with McLaughlin began in New York but gives no year for the band.

Relix reports that the original lineup recorded its first music without rehearsal. A new Shakti, with Shankar Mahadevan, Ganesh Rajagopalan and V. Selvaganesh joining McLaughlin and Hussain, was announced in 2022. Alongside Shakti, Echoes counts five Planet Drum albums with Mickey Hart, the latest being In the Groove in 2022.

The Grammy count, and why the sources differ

Grammy.com, the Recording Academy’s own database, lists four wins and nine nominations for Hussain. The wins are Global Drum Project in 2009 (Best Contemporary World Music Album, with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo), and three at the 66th ceremony in 2024. The three were As We Speak (Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, with Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Rakesh Chaurasia), This Moment by Shakti (Best Global Music Album) and the track Pashto (Best Global Music Performance, with Fleck, Meyer and Chaurasia).

The earlier nominations on the same page are Raga Aberi with Vikku Vinayakram (1996), Golden Strings of the Sarode with Aashish Khan (2007) and The Melody of Rhythm (2010). It also lists two nominations for the 68th ceremony in 2026, both for Shakti: the album Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) and the track Shrini’s Dream.

Other sources count differently. The IMG Artists biography says Planet Drum, an album Hussain co-created and produced with Mickey Hart, was the first winner in the Best World Music category, in 1992, and the Endowment calls it a 1992 Grammy-winning album on which he was featured. Grammy.com’s page for Hussain does not list it. The Tribune gives four wins in total by counting Planet Drum plus the three of 2024, which leaves out 2009. NPR and the Associated Press say four wins or name only some of them. This article uses the Grammy.com list and notes the Planet Drum credit as the other sources state it.

The Padma awards in the gazette

The three Padma awards can be checked in the Gazette of India. The Gazette Extraordinary of 19 March 1988 lists Zakir Hussain, Instrumental Music (Tabla), among the Padma Shri recipients, with a San Francisco address. The Gazette Extraordinary of 27 March 2002 prints notification No. 101-Pers/2002, dated 26 January 2002, which names him among the Padma Bhushan awardees for art (instrumental music) from Mumbai. The notification of 22 March 2023 lists him under the Padma Vibhushan, in art, from Maharashtra.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy for music, dance and drama, lists his Akademi Award in Hindustani instrumental music (tabla) under 1990, and records the Maharashtra Gaurav Puraskar for the same year. The IMG Artists biography says the President presented the Akademi Award in April 1991, and the Endowment gives 1991, so the two dates seem to be the award year and the presentation year. The Endowment awarded him its National Heritage Fellowship in 1999, which it calls the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. IMG Artists says it was presented at the United States Senate on 28 September 1999.

Concert halls, classrooms and a national song

The Endowment records that Hussain composed music for the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. The IMG Artists biography, written by his management, adds that in 2007 the Government of India chose him to compose an anthem for the sixtieth year of independence, titled Jai Hind. It lists his scoring for Heat and Dust, in which he also acted, and for Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha.

The biography says he was named an Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University in 2005 and taught a survey of Indian classical music and dance there as a full professor in the autumn semester of the 2005 to 2006 year. He taught the same course at Stanford in spring 2007. NPR notes that he played NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series twice, in 2010 and 2023.

December 2024

Hussain died on Sunday 15 December 2024 at a hospital in San Francisco, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease, according to his family. The Associated Press quotes the family’s statement as calling him a cultural ambassador with an “unparalleled legacy.” He was survived by his wife and two daughters. India TV reported on 16 December that he had been in hospital for about two weeks.

The Prime Minister’s Office published Narendra Modi’s message of 16 December. It describes Hussain as “a true genius who revolutionized the world of Indian classical music” and says he brought the tabla to the global stage. The Endowment’s statement of 17 December quotes the NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd, a collaborator, as saying Hussain’s playing took him back to the blues musician Howlin’ Wolf.