THE USTAD AND I

By MICHAEL O’HARA

Scarborough, circa summer 2000. I’m 20 years old. I’m sitting in my parents’ basement – most likely cross-legged – on my bed. My eyes are closed. I have incense burning (Nag Champa), and I have headphones strapped to my ears.

I am listening intently to a music that is new to me – Indian classical music. It’s a relatively new discovery for me, and I am all betwixt and bewitched and desperately trying to find my way in.

Indian classical music has rhythmic structures that are complicated to the unintiated – and to truly begin to even scratch the surface of the music itself, you have to understand the pulse. You can’t dance without a beat.

I had tried and tried. And on this night, I was really trying.

“Why am I not getting this?”

Bam!

It happened. It clicked. I heard it. It made sense!!

I was listening to a recording of exclusively percussion music – a tabla duet specifically. A father and son. Ustad Alla Rakha and Ustad Zakir Hussain. The father, Ustad Alla Rakha passed away in 2000.

Zakir was the son.

Ustad Zakir Hussain, world renowned teacher, ambassador, showman and above all musician, passed away unexpectedly on December 15 at the age of 73.

It is a tremendous loss. On so many levels. A loss to his students, to his audiences, and to music in general.

It’s also a personal loss.

In that same year – 2000 – my mom and I were on one of our sometimes tri-annual trips to New York City. I was looking in the newspaper for what was hip and happening in the city that night and then I saw it:

“Zakir Hussain and the Masters of Percussion. Tonight at Town Hall.”

Well, I flipped out. Absolutely flipped. We have to go, I mean we have to go. Mom! We have to go!

Mom (who in her teenage years hunted down LPs of Australian Indigenous music in Sam the Record Man) said okay, let’s do it.

We walked over to the Town Hall box office and were politely told it was sold out. Never being one to accept defeat, I went back to our hotel room later that day and grabbed a small cardboard display beside the phone in our room. I dismantled it so it folded out into a small banner and scrawled on it “Need two tickets, please!”

We went to Town Hall about an hour before the show started. I stood there holding my sign up. I think my mom thought it was probably an exercise in futility, but I had no shame.

Finally, someone approached us:

“You need two?”

“Yes.”

“Here you go.”

“How much?”

“Nothing. Enjoy.”

Ah, New York City kindness. Nothing like it. Truly.

So there we were. Mom and me. In a packed auditorium in New York City on a random night full of every single kind of person you could imagine. Indian, Black, White, Chinese, Inuit (okay, maybe not, but maybe??). It was a packed house.

The Masters of Percussion blew the roof off the place. We had never seen anything like it. Ever. And at the helm, was the master...Zakir.

I had a brief chance to speak with him after the performance – and that’s where this vintage snap comes from.

That performance was the beginning of a 20-year concert journey with Zakir.

We saw him here in Toronto at:

Roy Thomson Hall

Massey Hall

George Weston Recital Hall

Koerner Hall

Winter Garden Theatre

Markham Flato Theatre

...and at some of those venues listed we would have seen him a few times over the years. I venture to say that we probably had the honour of sitting in his audience a good 15 times. Always with different musicians – usually Indian, but sometimes jazz – even Bluegrass.

We got to know and get familiar with his stage presence. Zakir was always a taskmaster when it came to getting the sound right, both on stage and in the house – and we would always chuckle to ourselves when he would make a gesture to turn something up or down, or say “more house!” into the mic, etc.

In that beautiful way that only music and art and our personal ties with it can make the artist seem like we know them well, we “knew” dear Zakir.

On my mom’s birthday on October 30, I surprised her with tickets to see him at Massey Hall this up-coming April with the Masters of Percussion. She was thrilled. Me, too.

Scarborough, circa 2024. I’m 43 years old and my mom is 84.

We both sat here (not cross-legged, ouch for both of us!) when the confirmation finally came through that Zakir had indeed passed, and it was a sad moment.

My mom said last night – and it really struck me – “Sad to think of the life draining out of him.”

Because he was so – in the opposite sense of how the phrase is usually used – full of it.

The magical thing about him was that even though he was the absolute pinnacle in terms of muscianship, his charisma and charm and ease in front of an audience made him appealing and relatable, and yes, even sexy to someone like my mom who wasn’t necessarily an Indian classical music nerd.

That was his gift.

That's what made him Zakir.

We will miss him.

• Michael O’Hara is a Raag Mala Toronto team member.