Chennai: “Forgive me for the mistakes I am going to make,” Zakir Hussain once told Suresh Vaidyanathan as they were about to step on to the stage together. The ghatam artist replied, “Dada, you should be the one forgiving me; for after your performance, even the correct notes of mine would appear erroneous or trivial.” Hussain laughed aloud to the retort.
The tabla maestro who passed away on Dec 16, never confined himself to Hindustani or classical, and collaborated frequently with artists from the south, prominent among them violinist L Subramaniam and percussionist Vikku Vinayakram.
Vikku and Hussain had an unusual but successful collaboration for the band Shakti, formed in the 1970s. “We didn’t understand each other’s languages but when it came to music, there was a certain understanding of the mind, or maybe the heart. Language was not important, we realised,” says Vikku.
The 82-year-old says until the time of a performance, neither knew what the other was going to play. “We just played whatever they felt like on the spot. There was a lot of respect for each other.”
Subramaniam recalls that what set Hussain apart was his open-mindedness towards all genres of music and experimentation. “Hussain was always professional, never moody or temperamental like some artists, perhaps a trait he inherited from his father Ustad Alla Rakha Khan. He always entered stage with a smile; he wanted to make his audiences happy. His charisma was unmatched and other tabla artists eventually started imitating his style of shaking the head and smiling through concerts.”
Subramaniam and Hussain were supposed to perform together in Dec for the Margazhi season in Chennai. “I got a call from him in Nov saying he was in hospital. But we expected him to recuperate. We have lost a global musician, he is irreplaceable.”
