There’s no build-up. The stage, cluttered with instruments, is dark, yet you cannot miss Zakir Hussain’s mop of curls. The spotlight then turns on him and you see the famous unruly mane has thinned. But once those electrifying fingers touch the tabla, you are tempted to rewrite the Beatles number, penned by Paul McCartney, ‘When I’m sixty-four…I will still rock’.
He is unmistakably the only Indian classical musician, an accompanying artiste, more specifically a percussionist, who can draw a full house all by himself. And so it was at the Masters of Percussion concert at The Music Academy. Every row till up in the balcony was occupied by a rapturous audience whose applause unfailingly accompanied his every beguiling beat.
Psychedelic lights, dazzling pyrotechnics, symphonic tracks and unfaltering rapport — Zakir has a way of turning raag-taal shows into a spectacle. He believes in maximalism, where even the simple process of arriving at the ‘sam’ (completion of a rhythm circle), is quite melodramatic.
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And it wasn’t meaningless thumping that made up his rhythm explorations; every strike on the tabla had its own melody and a taal base.
The opening act of the show also featured the worthy inheritor of Sultan Khan’s sarangi legacy — the young Dilshad Khan — whose playing had a contemplative and elegiac quality. And during the almost one-hour jugalbandi with the sarangi, Zakir displayed no inhibitions about being both an accompanist and an exhibitionist.
One positive outcome of such global collaborations is the Ustad’s effort to bring to the fore the country’s unacknowledged folk musicians. And Masters of Percussion had them in the form of Vijay S. Chavan on the Maharashtrian dholki and Deepak Bhatt on the Punjabi dhol.
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Selva Ganesh ignited high energy with his kanjira while Steve Smith wove his kaleidoscopic drum and cymbal playing around konnakol so deftly that it prompted Zakir to call him Pandit Steve Smith at the end of the show.
In case you thought only plaintive notes emerge from sitar strings, the young Niladri Kumar briskly shuffled across the board, strummed vibrant tunes, produced deep drones and even held the sitar vertically to come up with super-fast passages.
The high-on-entertainment concert may not tug at traditionalists’ heart strings, but it brought the house up on its feet for a standing ovation when it rounded off with the seven artistes performing an intense sound play in unison.
Masters of Percussion was presented by The Hindu and Lakshmi-Saraswathi.