Tuesday, August 13, 2013
USTAD ZAKIR HUSSAIN, (born 9 March 1951), is
an Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and
composer.
He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1988, and Padma
Bhushan in 2002, by Government of India. He has also been awarded theSangeet
Natak Akademi Award in 1990, given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi,
India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama. In 1999, he was awarded
United States National Endowment for the Arts's National Heritage
Fellowship, the highest award given to traditional artists and musicians.
Hussain was born in Mumbai, India to the legendary tabla
player Alla Rakha. He attended St. Michael's High School in Mahim,
and graduated from St Xaviers, Mumbai.
Hussain was a child prodigy, and was touring by the age of twelve.
He went to the United States in 1970, beginning his international career which
includes more than 150 concert dates a year.
Hussain is a founding member of Bill Laswell's 'World Music
Supergroup' Tabla Beat Science.
He composed, performed and acted as Indian music advisor for
the Malayalam film Vanaprastham, a 1999 Cannes Film
Festival entry which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Los
Angeles International Film Festival (AFI Fest) in 1999, and won awards at 2000
Istanbul International Film Festival (Turkey), 2000 Mumbai International Film
Festival (India), and 2000 National Film Awards (India). He has composed
soundtracks for several movies, most notably In Custody and The
Mystic Masseur by Ismail Merchant, and has played tabla on the
soundtracks of Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now,Bernardo
Bertolucci's Little Buddha, and other films.The first Planet
Drum album, released in 1991 on the Rykodisc label, went on to earn the
1992 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album, the first Grammy ever
awarded in this category. The Global
Drum Project album and tour brought Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru
Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo together again in a reunion sparked by the 15th
anniversary of the ground-breaking album Planet Drum. The album Global
Drum Project won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World
Music Album at the 51st Grammy Awards Ceremony held on 8 February 2009.
He starred in several films specifically showcasing his musical
performance both solo and with different bands, including the 1998 documentary
"Zakir and His Friends", and the documentary "The Speaking
Hand: Zakir Hussain and the Art of the Indian Drum" (2003 Sumantra Ghosal). Hussain
co-starred as Inder Lal in the Merchant Ivory FilmHeat and Dust in
1983, for which he was an associate music director.
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