Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Today, we're hearing some producer picks from Zach Gottehrer-Cohen. We'll close out today with some music from the late, great tabla player Zakir Hussain. Zach, how much did you know about tablas before this conversation, and what did you learn?

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: I knew what they sounded like. It's the pitched drums that you'll hear in Indian traditional music, but that's about it. I've always loved that sound, and I've heard it in some of the contexts that Zakir had brought into other genres, but hadn't really engaged with it on its own. One of the things that I learned was they're pitched drums. A pitch instead of just a rhythm kind of thing.

You can hear that in the playing, in the way it sounds almost like singing more than drumming to keep a beat or to keep a pulse. One of the things that I found as I was doing research was that Indian classical music operates on this 16-subdivision rhythmic structure. The patterns are based on syllables. For example, I wrote this one down because I was going to forget.

Takita takadimi. You can hear the takita takadimi is how that would sound on the drums. It was really cool thinking about how different people around the world who engage with music through different traditions might not just think about the music differently, but also about how to learn the music differently, how to transmit that music from generation to generation differently. By the way, Zakir Hussain's father, also a tabla player.

Alison Stewart: After prepping the segment, you realized that you actually did know his work.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen: Yes. I had accidentally seen Zakir Hussain in a context where I did not know it was Zakir Hussain. The Dev Patel movie, Monkey Man, which was action-packed martial arts movie. I think it was Dev's directorial debut. He also starred in it and wrote it, I think. There's a scene where any good fight movie has to have the training montage, right? The "da da da" of Rocky. The Monkey Man version of that montage was Dev Patel has been rescued by a group of trans women, and one of them is a tabla player. The training is Dev is going at it with a punching bag alternating with these tablas playing.

It was almost like the player, the drums were training in a call-and-response kind of way. It was just fantastic. Then, as I'm doing research for this segment, I'm like, "Why does Zakir look so familiar to me? There's no way I've seen--" I was like, "Oh, oh, the tabla player of Monkey Man, of course." I made that connection. It goes to show how important it was for Zakir not to only be really, really virtuosic at his instrument, but also for him to be bringing this instrument into these other artistic contexts, whether that be genres of music that don't usually have tablas, or in movies where people would go see him play.

Alison Stewart: Let's get into my conversation with the legendary tabla player Zakir Hussain.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Zakir Hussain, so nice to meet you.

Zakir Hussain: Nice to meet you too, Alison.

Alison Stewart: On the face of it, tabla-playing seems like it would fall into the Western idea of the rhythm section.

Zakir Hussain: Yes, usually does.

Alison Stewart: Yes, but in Indian music, you often play with much longer phrases than eight-bar beats. How do you describe tabla and the kind of drums that Western audiences would be more familiar with?

Zakir Hussain: Well, to put it in a nutshell, you talk about drummers in the Western world, but then you have drummers in the Western world who are band leaders like Buddy Rich or somebody like that. They play solos, they perform, and they are featured drummers who do things. Where tabla fits in in Indian music is exactly that. It's not only an accompanying instrument, but also has a solo repertoire and a tradition that has existed for over 300 years.

That, therefore, has developed an immense cache of repertoire that can be performed on the instrument. In fact, in India, it's normal to have a one-hour or a 90-minute tabla concert or a rhythm concert where aficionados, 1,000 to 2,000 people, will come and sit there and listen to a concert and enjoy it, appreciate it. That's how it works in Indian music. One thing about tabla is that it's an instrument that lends itself well to being able to fit in with technical abilities of any other drums because of its muscular tradition and fingers like piano interacting together.

You can be a bongo drum. You can be a conga drum. You can be a drum-set drum and do all that and transpose all that information onto the tabla. It can provide a harmonic element as well, where the low drum acts as a bass and the high drum acts as a rhythm, like a bongo or something, but with a tone and a pitch. Therefore, it allows for that harmonic experience as well as a rhythmic experience.

Alison Stewart: Is it good for improvising?

Zakir Hussain: Yes, it's amazing for improvising because that's what Indian music is all about. You set up a melody and a bridge, and then you improvise, a la jazz. The difference is, in jazz, you improvise over a set of chords called a form. In Indian music, you set up a melody in a raga mode like, say, one chord, and then the whole song is based in that one chord. A more melodic form as opposed to a harmonic form.

Alison Stewart: You don't have a tabla in front of you right now. I'm hoping you can give us a little demonstration with your voice. Have you heard of this? The konnakol?

Zakir Hussain: Oh, yes, the konnakol, which is what we first learn. I remember when I was two days old, and I was brought home from the hospital. I was handed to my dad. The tradition is that the father would recite a prayer in the child's ear. The first words that the child should hear is that. My father took me in his arm and sang rhythms in my ear because he was a rhythmist.

My mother was, of course, very upset about it. He said, "This is my prayer," and this is what he is going to do. After that, the tradition was that he would just sing rhythms to me. At the age of three or four, when I started to "dah," he would take me to a shrine that was near the house. We'd sit there and we'd sing rhythms with each other. He would say, "Okay, here's one." [vocalizing]

I had to reply to that. [vocalizing] I had to make things up to be able to further the conversation, advance the conversation. That's how it is. We learn it as a language. When we play, we think about it as something that we are telling. It's a story. It's a happening. You try to induce the instrument into making emotional content into the performance. That's one of the advantages that tabla has over other percussion instruments.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zakir Hussain. He is a world-renowned tabla player. Earlier this year, you won three Grammys?

Zakir Hussain: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Congratulations, first of all. [laughs]

Zakir Hussain: Thank you very much. I was lucky.

Alison Stewart: You were lucky?

Zakir Hussain: You end up connecting with some incredible musicians, and you ride on their shoulders. I was on this album with my friend of 50 years, John McLaughlin, who's a jazz guitarist. We formed a band in the 1970s called Shakti. It didn't quite get that recognition, but this year, it won the Best World Music Album award. I made another album with Béla Fleck, the banjo player.

Alison Stewart: Oh, we'll get there. We'll get there. [laughs] First, let's hear a little bit from the album that won Best Global Music Album. This is a song, Bending the Rules, this moment.

Zakir Hussain: Okay.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain: Bending the Rules]

Alison Stewart: Awards aside, what were your goals for recording this record, that song?

Zakir Hussain: We were sitting in our own little homes, dealing with the pandemic and just talking with each other, connecting. We started sending music to each other, MP3 files, or whatever. Then John started putting them together, and he said, "Wait a minute, guys. This sounds like we could actually put all this together and make an album." That's how it began.

Then we got seriously involved in it. We figured out softwares, which would allow us to interact on Zoom and Audiomovers and whatnot, different things. This is how the album was born. Then finally, when the pandemic was done, me and the other rhythmist, Selva, got together in Monte Carlo with John and laid down the rhythm track to give it a live feel. That's how it came together.

While we were making an album, one of our friends called us, and he said, "Hey, guys, do you realize by the time this is done and it comes out, it will be 50 years that you've been together?" John and me, that is, and 50 years since it was first founded, the band. It felt just right. It was just perfect. It allowed us the time we needed to be able to reminisce and put this together in a way so we could put a concoction of all those 50 years into this album. That's what happened.

Alison Stewart: That's lovely. You also won Best Global Music Performance for your contribution to a track called Pashto. Who will we hear on this track when we hear this?

Zakir Hussain: Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, myself, and this Indian flautist, Rakesh Chaurasia. We were on the album. Pashto was something that was my nod to, actually, an old friend of my dad who was a keeper of this tradition, which actually put together northern Indian folk music with Celtic music.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

Zakir Hussain: It turns out that the British army had these musicians who played the bagpipes and whistles and whatnot. They got together with the northern frontier musicians of that time, 200 years ago, and interacted. Instruments were exchanged and so on. In recent times, when I was growing up, there were still bands in India which played a very hybrid form of music with bagpipes and whistles and bodhráns and so on and so forth. This gentleman was my father's dear friend. Even at that time, with such violence around us, there were these musicians who crossed over all those hindrances and made music together that had something positive to say. That's what Pashto was all about.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Zakir Hussain: Pashto]

Alison Stewart: My guest is Zakir Hussain. He is a world-renowned tabla player. We're talking about his Grammy wins, his current tour, his long career of collaborating and bringing all the sounds of India to our ears. You've talked about listening and the importance of listening to the musicians that you're playing with. What happens when you listen?

Zakir Hussain: You react more naturally and inject that, which is important for the conversation. I must give you a little example of it. There was an actor called David Niven at one time in Hollywood. He, as a young actor, released a movie. In those days, the tradition was to show the movie in private, in a party, on a screen in Hollywood, in somebody's home. He did that, and there was everybody coming up to him and saying, "That was great. That was great. That was great." There was this one senior actor who just sat in the corner without saying anything.

Finally, David approached him and said, "Mr. Chaplin, do you have anything to say about this?" Mr. Chaplin said, "Young man, don't just stand there waiting for your turn to speak. Learn to listen." The question is, if you are not listening, you're not aware of the conversation. In an improvised form of music, that is an essential part. Without listening, you're not able to put things together. When someone like Miles Davis says, "Too many notes," it basically means that you're just taking over so much time that you're invading someone else's space and not allowing for the conversation to be a collective. That's listening. The most important seed in the plant called improvisation.

Alison Stewart: Zakir, you have a cameo in the film Monkey Man, [laughs] which came out earlier this year, directed by Dev Patel. We have a piece of an interview that Dev did talking about why he wanted you for this role and why he wanted the tabla for a particular scene. Let's hear it.

Dev Patel: For me, our cinema, our culture is rooted in music and Indian classical music. It's overlooked by the youth. My best friend, Raghul, he's an ardent Indian classical fan. I went to dinner with this man, Zakir. I was like, "I went to dinner with this dude." He's like, "Do you know who that is? That's Zakir Hussain. He's like the greatest to ever play the drums, the tabla, ever. He's one of one."

That led me down a path of just watching all of his videos. Then I reached out to him, and I was like, "Look, I've done this sequence. I want to do a musical jazz thing." In India, they call it a jugalbandi, a call and answer. "You tear up the drums, and I'm going to be on this dusty rice sack, and you're going to be my Mr. Miyagi or R2D2. You're going to not speak, but you're going to speak to me with your instrument and help me tune mine," and then it's going to explode and get bigger and bigger.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting, all the different cross-cultural milestones that he mentioned in that clip. When you think about the tabla, why do you think music, maybe percussion, is good at bringing out these similarities in cross-cultural reference, R2D2 to Indian classical music?

Zakir Hussain: It just harks to the time we live in. Everything is available to us at our fingertips. It's there. We step out of our home, and there is a Cinemax.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Yes.

Zakir Hussain: We open up our computer, and there's Netflix or whatever. We are able to keep abreast of what's happening at the other half of the world and on the other side of the planet at the same time. That's why the young people understand that the acceptance of what somebody does in Japan or in Indonesia or in India, in Africa, in any part of the world, is now a natural progress in being able to speak that language in a universal form. Then that's why you can associate tabla with an R2D2 or associate it with a character like Mr. Miyagi. It will make total sense to whoever is listening to that conversation and put two and two together.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] My guest is Zakir Hussain. As we heard earlier, you're going to be touring with Rahul Sharma, whose father was a musician as well, as you have mentioned about your own father, but he's your friend as well, yes?

Zakir Hussain: Yes, I played for 40 years with Rahul Sharma's father. In fact, I consider him as one of my mentor in my young age, helping me. You need to have some kind of a black boat to throw things in and be accepted. He was that who allowed me to be me on stage and gain that confidence. Yes, we did play together so much, and his son Rahul, who's a worthy successor of his father's legacy.

To have him there and to hear that music in a younger hand through a younger mind and that musicology and that musicality, if I may, is a challenge for me to be able to find a new way to be able to advance that conversation that I used to have 30 years ago with his father. It's fun to be able to discover nooks and corners in my music, which Rahul and his way of playing that music requires for me to express through. That keeps the fire burning and keeps things more present and more fun.

Alison Stewart: You can still be challenged at this point in your career?

Zakir Hussain: Oh, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Really?

Zakir Hussain: Yes, I can be challenged because today's young musicians are not just married to this one way of looking at music. They have a universal understanding of music. An Indian musician playing a raga structure, for instance, is not only experiencing that raga in an Indian mode, but also finding similarities of what it is in Japan, or what it is in Indonesia, or what it is in a jazz concert, or in an African ensemble, and tie it all together into giving a projection of that particular mode in a more worldly manner.

For me, it has now become like when I played with Ravi Shankar. My first concert in America was with Ravi Shankar at the Fillmore East in 1970. Things have changed since then. Sitar players today are much more panoramic in their understanding of music. To have that challenge and hear the same music but with so many layers of incredible harmonic influences, something to react to just keeps me on my toes.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with tabla player Zakir Hussain. He died on December at the age of 74, two months after joining us in studio. Thanks so much to Zach for producing this show. We'll be back tomorrow with a show curated by our producer, Simon Close. Until then, I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you, and I will meet you back here tomorrow.