Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart Remembers Zakir Hussain

Mickey Hart stayed with Zakir Hussain until “the moment he stepped off this plane” on December 15 at the age of 73 – as he should have.

The Grateful Dead percussionist and the Indian tabla master had a close relationship, both as friends and as musicians. They met in 1970 when Hussain’s father, Allarakha Qureshi, sent Hussain to join Hart on tour and began working with Hart on his first solo album, thunder rolling In 1972, and continuing until Hussein’s death, the two were still working on a project that included tuning tambourines, drones and sonic baths. This included the Grammy Award-winning Planet Drum and Global Drum Project, as well as 1976’s Diga Rhythm Band and other collaborations on Hart’s albums such as 1990’s on the edge and Mickey Hart’s mystery box 1996.

Hussein’s legacy also includes four Grammy Awards (three of which were won earlier this year), founding member of the fusion group Shakiti, and collaborations with Pharoah Sanders, Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer, John Handy, L. Shankar, Charles Lloyd, and others. Records recorded by people. Hussain also taught at Princeton University and Stanford University, and received a J.D. from the University of Bombay.

Hart told advertising billboard “We are still in shock” after Hussein’s death, but he was happy to share his fond memories of his friend and fellow rhythm player.

“When you talk about a great rhythm master, you have to start with Zakir. He had a huge impact on all genres, considering he crossed more borders musically than anyone I’ve ever seen or known in history. More. No one has gone further and done so much than Zakir, because he is always on the road, spreading the seeds of rhythm wherever he goes. Maybe every 1000 years you will encounter someone like. Someone like Zakir. He was the Mozart of instruments, one of the greatest musicians of all time, a great tabla player and a great rhythm player. Zakir could play from the spoon to the nose. All the instruments – he could play the nose flute like a madman, he could play everything.

“He comes from a family of drummers, so it’s part of his DNA. He was born for drums, so he was raised with his father reciting rhythms in his ears as a child. Alaka was my mentor, my Teacher. When Phil Lesh gave me a card called North and South Indian drums; He handed it to me and said, ‘You should listen to this. This is for you,” or something like that. When I heard it, I was simply hooked. I actually heard it and I’ve never been the same since. It had Allarakha in it and I couldn’t believe what he was playing. It influenced a lot of Grateful Dead music because of its unusual time signatures…those very complex rhythmic gems that we really practiced for a long time to learn. I found (Allarakha) in New York in 1967 and he became my teacher.

“Zakir knocked on my door in 1970; his father sent him to me because his father was from the simulation world and had a quiet personality, and I met Zakir when he was still a young man We lived together for a while and we had a very good rapport and he was very open to Western feel and rhythms – as he was supposed to come from North Indian classical music, where you were supposed to be very precise, everything. It was all made up of traditional, old rhythms that everyone played one way, and in the West, it was loud music and a new rhythm that was funkier than what he was used to playing, and he embraced that. I play in that serpentine way, in and out of the groove, and it slides and slides and everyone follows it; this makes for an amazing, living creature rather than a predetermined rhythm.

“So he opened himself up to the West and thrived in it. He loved it. We played together, just like it was meant to be. For me, playing these North Indian classical rhythms was very difficult at first; it took It took months, years to get to Zakir’s level. He came down, I went up, we met in the middle, and that was it, but it resonated so much; we felt love in the groove. , and the groove is deep. Both he and his father competed. thunder rollingmy first solo work, and we made a lot of records together. He was a colleague and a master of rhythm and our strong friendship translated into rhythm – I would say happiness is a good word to describe the feeling we get when we play together.

“It’s hard to say who he influenced – let’s just say it was different for anyone who heard him play. A lot of people couldn’t understand him, but they felt him. They heard someone playing with passion they’d never heard before. of rhythm. He’s the Einstein of rhythm – which is a great way to think about him as a rhythm player and what he can do and say with the language of rhythm. He’s way ahead of me on this planet. Any other percussionist or rhythmist that I’ve ever worked with. Maybe there are better people on Mars, but not on Earth – I’ve heard a lot of them.

“Jerry (Garcia) joined us because on the edge (1990). Jerry and Zakir get along great. Jerry immediately noticed who he was, and Zakir, of course, liked Jerry’s style of music. Of course, the banjo is like a rhythm instrument, and Jerry plays the guitar like a banjo. Many bluegrass instruments work perfectly within Indian rhythms because of its nature of three against two, with all these intertwined rhythms continuing through the banjo playing and tabla drumming. Of course, that also explains the collaboration with (Hussein) Bela Fleck, because of course he was a banjo virtuoso or banjo player.

“(Hussein) was a very kind man and that’s how he played. He was also very good as a composer and arranger. He could do it all. He could play anything, but he was a A kind man – very considerate and very generous. He started teaching in the 1970s. He had thousands of students all over the world and he was constantly traveling; even when we were touring. If he had three days off, he would also go to India to conduct the National Symphony, or accept the greatest honors and come back for a sound check on Monday. He was able to travel long distances, and he had this system of meditation so that he didn’t get jet lag, which. Improved his proficiency, so he was able to perform more and travel. He just wouldn’t stop.

“We started digging out a lot of stuff that we’d never gotten (released), never seen on the street, and there was a huge amount of it. You have to remember, we’d been recording since 1970, so there was a lot of Zakir Hussey Because of (Zakir Hussein’s) work, you bet I want to do a Zakir Hussein (Zakir Hussein) compilation and keep his music alive, and that’s what I’m going to do.

Meanwhile, Hart and fellow Grateful Dead bandmates Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzman will appear at the Kennedy Center Honors, which will air on CBS on December 8 and 12 I was entertained there on the 22nd of September. Theater celebrates together. “It’s nice to get an honor, but it’s not necessary. It’s hard to feel honored for something you’re lucky enough to do, you know? You don’t do it for a medal… but it’s a great artistic performance that showcases the music How powerful it is and how music can cover so much ground in so many different ways.

The band’s current incarnation, Dead & Company, will become the first band to host a second residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas and will host 18 shows Dead Forever – Live at the Sphere Starting March 20th. “

“If you stay in a place long enough, you start to understand the room; you play the room as if the room is your instrument,” Hart explains. “We just play relaxed, play from the heart, and we serve the music. That’s what musicians do. We’re just professional musicians, and the Sphere is a great place to work.