India is fast becoming cultural capital of Asia, says tabla maestro.
Bureau Report
BENGALURU: The West now looks to India for inspiration in music, says the San Francisco-based Indian tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, who is in India to perform with the Symphony Orchestra of India for a performance in Mumbai later this week.musci
A child prodigy, Hussain,62, who first performed professionally when he was 12 — his father was legendary tabla player Alla Rakha Khan — and since then toured the world, collaborating with hundreds of global musicians, starting own record company, and composing soundtracks for films including Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” in 1993, said in an interview to The Wall Street Journal that some of the artists he would like to work with are cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Zubin Mehta and would also like to be able to have a commissioned piece that would feature orchestra with tabla.
Asked his opinion about music in India today, Hussain said: “I think it’s fabulous. The West looks to India for inspiration — it used to be the other way round. The one man who actually took the camera lens to the West and turned it toward India was Ravi Shankar. Until he and my father arrived in America, India was a third world country that had nothing to offer.”
According to him, one of the “greatest things that have happened in India” is the Symphony Orchestra of India. “It’s a big Himalayan climb to be able to find funding, to be able to support a symphony orchestra. The fact that it exists here, while all the symphony orchestras all over the world are closing down due to lack of funding, is amazing,” he said.
“India is fast becoming the cultural capital of Asia, and looked at as the place which will nurture culture and music, whether it’s Indian or Western classical or folk. It’s not easy to make this happen,” said Hussain.
Asked as to why he does not play in India more often, Hussain said that he wanted to see seats at concerts filled up, as otherwise “I feel that I have worn out my welcome. That’s how I am. I work maybe two-three shows in a major city in the world a year. The reason is, if I am to play at least once in each city a year, that’s 100 shows. Then it piles up and suddenly I’m playing 150-odd shows a year. That takes up almost 300 days — not much left to be home and with the family.”
On the perception that the tabla is a man’s instrument, with very few female tabla players, Hussain pointed out that there aren’t many female sarod players, sitar or flute or pakhawaj players, either.
“It has nothing to do with whether they can play or not. It wasn’t considered apt for the daughter of the house to perform on stage in the 50s and 60s. Even respectable families looked at music as a second-class job. Then, people like Pandit Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan lent some respectability to the art. They brought forth to the people that musicians are educated, and can be socially acceptable,” adding that there are female tabla players in India today.