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Zakir
Hussain
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Zakir Hussain is probably
the premier classical musician and accompanist
in India today. The son of Ustad Allarakha
(himself almost single-handedly responsible
for introducing the tabla to the West through
a string of recordings in the '60s with Ravi
Shankar), Zakir showed prodigious talent on
tabla drums as a child, and first rose to
prominence outside of his native India as
a member of John McLaughlin's monumental fusion
group Shakti with violinist L. Shankar and
ghatam drummer Vikku Vinayakram. Shakti recorded
three albums for Columbia in the mid-1970s
and toured the US, Europe and the Far East
while Zakir was barely in his twenties.
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Since then Zakir has
cultivated an unprecedented reputation as
a master musician who can move easily between
traditional and popular music styles from
all cultures. He has collaborated with an
impressive list of artists over the years,
including Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, L.
Shankar and numerous Indian classical musicians,
as well as Mickey Hart (with whom he shared
a 1992 Grammy award for Best World Music Album
for his tabla playing and co-production on
Planet Drum), Pharoah Sanders, Jack Bruce,
Van Morrison, Billy Cobham, and many more.
Zakir's studio work with producer Bill Laswell
reaches back to several past projects before
Beat Matrix - particularly Hear No Evil, released
in 1988 on Virgin/Venture, and Material's
Hallucination Engine, released in 1994 on
Axiom. |
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Zakir continues to
tour the world tirelessly in various live
contexts. He consistently attracts huge crowds
for his classical concerts; in April 2000
he sold out the Town Hall in New York for
a one-night performance with Sultan Khan and
other guest percussionists, and later this
year he will rejoin the original lineup of
Shakti for a reunion tour of Europe.
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PALM PICTURES. All rights Reserved. |
