Page 41 - Seniors Today - March Issue
P. 41

John McLaughlin with Zakir Hussain in a Remember Shakti concert
          Besides the sheer magic in his fingers and        a balance between serious talk and quick
         his magnetic stage persona, what has been          humour. Even at shows, he could suddenly
         impressive about Hussain is the ease with          have the crowd in splits. Once, a dignitary
         which he moves across genres. He has a             walked in with his entourage during the
         very open mind, and that is something I            middle of his performance. Hussain didn’t
         discovered early on during my interactions         stop, but adapted to play as though he was
         with him as a journalist.                          mimicking the VIP. The crowd enjoyed the
                                                            fun, but the guest never got it.
         Wit and versatility                                 During interviews, Hussain would often
         I first met Hussain in 1997, at a press            tell anecdotes about Ustad Allarakha’s
         conference held before ace jazz keyboardist        interactions with sitar maestro Pandit Ravi
         Joe Zawinul’s concert at Rang Bhavan in            Shankar and drummer Buddy Rich, or
         Mumbai. Zakir was to appear as a guest             explain the salient features of the Punjab
         artiste, and though the focus was on Zawinul,      gharana which he represented. He would
         some of us introduced ourselves on the side.       always praise tabla players from other
          I was to write a concert review, and quickly      schools, and talk of global percussion masters
         realised that though they played some              like Hart, Giovanni Hidalgo, Sikiru Adepoju,
         amazing music, they didn’t announce the            Leonard Eto, Billy Cobham and Vinnie
         names of the pieces. During the interval,          Colauita.
         I tried to go to the green room by walking          Once, to surprise him, I asked him to name
         across the stage. “Mr Mid-Day,” a voice called,    his five favourite musicians ever. He said
         addressing the newspaper I worked for. It was      since Ustad Allarakha would be on top
         Hussain. He continued, “Don’t walk across          anyway, he would like to name five others.
         the stage but go that way. If you trip on those    Quickly, he replied, “Shivkumar Sharma,
         wires, they won’t bother about you. But it will    McLaughlin, Kishori Amonkar (vocalist),
         take them three hours to fix everything for the    Charlie Parker (jazz great) and Madan Mohan
         second half.”                                      (film composer).”. Quickly, he smiled and
          I was to encounter those kinds of witty           said, “Call me again tomorrow, and I’ll name
         remarks quite often, but he knew how to draw       Jimi Hendrix (rock guitarist) and four others.”


        SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #21 | MARCH 2021                                                              41
   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44