Weekend Pick: Zakir Hussain & The Masters Of Percussion

By Alexander Hough in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 19, 2010 3:40PM

From a technical proficiency standpoint, there are two types of talented musicians. The first, the regular ol' talent, is special but relatively common. The rarely-seen second contingent consists of musicians whose astonishing command is tied to movement so relaxed and fluid it's like they took up their instruments in utero. For a succinct illustration of this difference, check ut this video of a drum battle between drum legend (and Chicagoan!) Gene Krupa and drum god Buddy Rich. Zakir Hussain, master of the tabla - two small tuned hand drums, one wood, one metal - falls into the latter group. Like Rich, his playing is paradoxically calm. As an added bonus, Hussain couples his eye-popping speed with sensitive musicianship.

The beginning of Hussain's career coincided with the Western infatuation with Indian music and the blossoming of "world music," trends started by his father, tabla player Allarakha Khan Qureshi, and, perhaps the most famous Indian musician, Ravi Shankar (whose daughter, Norah Jones, is performing at the Chicago Theater on Saturday). The open-minded, experimental rock bands of the 1960s particularly embraced the new Eastern influence (the most notable early example is the Beatles's "Norwegian Wood" from 1965, with George Harrison playing the sitar).

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart also fell in love with Indian music and studied tabla with Allarakha, beginning with a four-day-and-night marathon session in 1968. That relationship resulted in a formative experience for Allarakha's son: Shortly after coming to America as an 18-year-old, Hussain stayed at Hart's northern California ranch while Allarakha toured with Shankar. Besides beating the hell out of any college story you have - Hart was known as the Grateful Dead's leading advocate of psychotropics (now there's a superlative) - it led to a musical exchange that resulted in the further prominence of Indian music. Hussain's collaborations in the 1970s included work with Hart with the 1972 album "Rolling Thunder" and the 1976 formation of the Diga Rhythm Band (and restarted in the early 1990s with "Music at the Edge" and "Planet Drum"), as well as Shakti, the trio that included jazz guitarist John McLaughlin and violinist L. Shankar. He's been all over the literal and figurative map since then, most recently touring with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer.

Still, two-thirds of Hussain's concerts consist solely of the Indian music that influenced his music partners and seeped into Western culture, and that's what Chicago will hear when he brings his Masters of Percussion to Symphony Center on Sunday night. The heavily improvised show will still be a fusion, although rather than a coupling with Western music, the melded styles will be various Indian genres. Also from the Hindustani (North Indian classical music) tradition in which Hussain was trained will be his brother and fellow percussionist Taufiq Qureshi, Sabir Khan on sirangi (bowed fretless lute) and vocals, and Navin Sharma, also a former Allarakha student, on dholak (dual-sided barrel drum). From the Carnatic (South Indian) tradition will be violinists Ganesh and Kumaresh and Sridhar Parthasarathy on mridangam (another dual-sided drum). Rounding out the lineup will be the Motilal Dhakis from Bengal, dancers/percussionists from the eastern part of the state in India's eastern corner.

For a sample of what you'll be getting yourself into, here's a brief video of a Hussain performance (the non-tabla instrument is the sirangi).

Sunday at 7:00 p.m., Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $20-$70