Ravinia 2023 Issue 6

“ Clive Davis persisted: ‘ We have to tell the record store which bin to put the record in . ’ John and I looked at each other and said, ‘ We don’t know; it’s just music . ’ ” their raison d’être since the beginning. Now considered a cornerstone of the amorphous “global music” genre, Shakti began producing its signature blend of East and West before there was even a name for their sound. “At that time, there was no fusion music, no New Age, no World Music, no nothing,” Hussain recalls. “I guess Shakti was at the forefront of getting that process started.” He remembers first confronting the question of how to categorize their music in their early days, when they played their first recording for Clive Davis, the famous producer at Columbia/CBS Records. “He said, ‘Okay, what is this music?’ John and I looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t know; it’s just music.’ “Clive Davis persisted: ‘But John, I have to tell my PR team how to sell it. We have to tell the record store which bin to put the record in. You’ve got to give me an idea of what to call it.’ John said, ‘We don’t know. Call it whatever you want to call it.’ So we released the first Shakti album with no label on it regarding style of music.” LISTENING TO HUSSAIN share vivid anecdotes from his 72 years, it becomes easy to understand how he became a world-class artist and syncretic musician. He’s the eldest son of legendary tabla player Alla Rakha, so his exposure to traditional Indian music began from birth. Furthermore, he was educated with an impressive (even stunning) commitment to understanding diverse perspectives and respecting Hindu, Muslim, and Christian theologies. He also developed a deliciously dry sense of humor. “I was born in a small little sleepy town called Bombay,” says Hussain, who now lives with his wife in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. The city of his childhood, with about 3 million residents, is very different from today’s Mumbai, whose estimated population exploded by a factor of seven or eight since the mid-20th century, making it one of the most densely populated cities on earth. After we share a chuckle over his joke, Hussain clarifies, “Seriously, in 1951, it was a coastal town with nice beaches and a clean ocean, and hardly any cars on the road. But that’s all changed.” As the son of an accomplished In- dian musician, Hussain says his career path was predestined. He then shares a story about arriving home when he was two days old: “My mother pre- sented me to my dad. The tradition is for the father to recite a prayer in the ear of the child, so my father took me in his arms—but instead of reciting a prayer, he recited rhythmic syllables. My mother was livid. She said, ‘Why are you doing this? You’re supposed to say a prayer to bless him!’ “My father said, ‘This is my prayer. This is how I pray; this is how he will pray.’ From there on, he would hold me in his arms for an hour or whatev- er, and just sing rhythms in my ear.” Flash forward some years, when young Zakir played tabla for 10 min- utes at a school concert. Impressed, his father asked him if he wanted to study the instrument seriously, and of course he said yes. “So my father said, ‘To- morrow we will begin.’ And tomorrow was 3 o’clock in the morning. He woke me up, and we walked to the shrine of a Sufi saint while the world slept.” Thus began a new phase of educa- tion. For a year or so, father and son would sit at the nearby shrine—not to play music, but to talk about it. “He was teaching me the reverence that goes with it, the whole history. I would spend a few hours with him, then my mother would come looking for us, bring me back, and shove some breakfast into me.” Once his belly was full, the boy studied the Koran for an hour before heading to a Catholic high school. “So in the space of a few hours every morning,” he explains, “I would go through so many different ways of life. I’d be studying Hindu mythology, then to the Islamic system, then to holding a Bible in my hand. But in none of those moments was I ever made to feel by the masters involved that their way was the right way. I RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 28 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2023 80