Zakir Hussain Interview, Sado Island, Japan

When did you first meet Kodo and what was your impression?

I've met them over the past few years.  But the most serious meeting took place in Mickey Hart's studio in March of this year.  But they had already been talking to me before that for this festival. (Earth Celebration 2001)   But we met there because of the new Kodo CD that's being recorded.  So I came together with Mickey to see if we could do a piece together.  That was a more one-on-one intimate meeting.  Before that we had met, said hello, and we'd been in the film "Zakir and His Friends."  So since March we've been more closely connected, more collaborative.

We played in Mickey's  studio for a few days.  We had a good time performing together.  Until then I was wondering how it was going to work.  But then in March when we played together it sort of fell right in.  I had been working with an ex-Kodo player, named Leonard Eto, for about seven years now.  In fact after Sado (Location of Kodo concert) I will be performing in Tokyo to have a concert together.  So I was already sort of aware of the patterns that emerge from the drums, the odaiko.  It seemed it would work but I had no idea how it would work with all of them together.  But then in March when we played in Mickey's studio I was convinced it was going to be incredible.  And the subtlety of the instruments as well as the power of it, the range is so incredible, I was wondering if any of the instruments would be able to cope with it.  But after we played in March I decided that I should bring the fabulous Vinayakram, my Shakti mate from the 70s.  His instrument is the ghatam which is a soft instrument.  But it seemed like it would work just beautifully.  His son Selvaganesh on the kanjira.  And then Ustad Sultan Khan on the sarangi, the melodic instrument.  I thought it would be nice to have the Sarangi along.  It works well with the flute because it has the same tonic range. 

When did you compose the songs you will perform?

We worked on them over the email route.  The patterns were discussed.  In March we discussed some patterns.  Then when the Artistic Director (Motofumi Yamaguchi)  worked on those ideas and sent the information to me.  But the final shape took place two days ago when we arrived and went straight to rehearsal.  And w ran through all the pieces and decided what instrument will play when.  I tried to get off the stage but they wouldn't let me so I guess I will be there all through.  Some of the instruments will come in and out.  We added the dance.  Dance is very important element in Indian rhythms because they wear bells on their feet.  So it fits in very beautifully.  We did the final workout of the pieces only two days ago.  But some of the pieces are already part of the Kodo repertoire and we created space for the Indian percussion to fit in.  And there are a couple that have been worked out from scratch.  The Kodo dancer and Indian dancer will play with my ensemble, not Kodo.  Then there is a jingbang where everybody plays together.

Tabla is a very improvisational instrument while taiko is more patterned.  How did you work together?

Well Kodo has moved a little bit more into the deep end I would say.  They are not just playing fixed music.  Within their fixed framework they are leaving space for drummers to improvise a little bit.  And in fact in the pieces we are playing we have left room for each other to improvise.  But having said that, tabla is a kind of instrument that, because of its improvising capability and sound capability in terms of range (being melodic and rhythmic), it's able to fit with anything.  And the one piece that I am really looking forward to is where the there is a taiko and tabla duet.  So it's going to be interesting.  We have left room in there to improvise.  So I think it's going to be extremely challenging.  And I think it's much more challenging for the Kodo drummers than it is for me because I am so used to improvising and they have to catch the qeues I give them.  And it's not coming from fixed material or repertoire.  But having done the rehearsal, it's falling into place.  And in anticipation of my arrival they have been doing lots of improvisation so that they are comfortable in never-never-land.

The tabla is primarily an accompaniment instrument.  So did you find that you work off of them most often?

Yes, it has always been so.  With any kind of music that Indian instruments have worked with it has been the Indian instrumentalists who have moved into the other area.  It's because of the quality of the instruments, the ability of the instrument, and the comfort in being able to improvise.  It's easier for us to move into the other person's territory than it is for the other person to move into ours.  Except for the case of Ravi Shankar when he played with symphony orchestras.  He composed Indian ragas for them to play.  And they were written out.  So they were fixed but they were improvised when they were being composed.  But with Shakti or with Mickey or Olatunji or Giovanni, it's much easier for the tablas to move to their neighborhood.  Someone like McLaughlin is a musician who crosses over because he has studied both forms of music for many years.  So he is able to play Indian ragas and real crazy rhythm sycles and be able to improvise and feel comfortable.  But McLaughlin I think is a rare musician who is able to do that.  Someone like Mickey Hart cand do that.  We played 10 and a quarter beat patterns and improvised and he played along just fine.  And Giovanni Hidalgo, he can do things like that because he is a crazy man who can play all kinds of incredible stuff.  But most of the time it is the Indian musicians who move into the territories of the other musicians because of their ability to improvise.

It seems that tabla is similar to Poongmul or Samulnori of Korea.

I played with Samulnori.  I have done three festivals with them in India.  They tore the house down.  It was amazing to watch them take the Indian audience and play with them.  I love Samulnori.  We have a folk tradition in India where we use similar kinds of drums with similar kinds of bells.  It is usually played in temples and is called "kirtam."  And that's so close to Samulnori that it was easy to bring the Kirtam group and put Samulnori on stage and watch them break the walls down.  What was really interesting was in Seattle we had a concert where myself, Billy Cobham, Tito Puente and the Samulnori played together.   But it started with me soloing and then Tito joining me and then Billy coming in and finally Samulnori.  But what was interesting was that there were no hiccups, no speedbreakers, no red lights.  It so seemlessly flowed right into them coming on and joining us.  That old saying that rhythm is universal is so old and corny to say these days.  The pulse is the same everywhere.  We just have our own way of registering it or decorating or packaging it.  It just comes through so beautifully.  As you said, tabla fits with Samulnori.  The reason it fits is because of the Kirtam tradition that we have in India and because tabla is played in that tradition.  And because of the similar instrumentation.  It may be possible that they are all related.  In the 1400s there was the Chola dynasty which was based in Madras, Tamil Nadu.  That dynasty was one of the most powerful kingdoms of its time and it conquered the whole coastline including Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and up to Hong Kong.  So it's possible that at that time these traditions collided and certain exchanges were made.  An that's why we have similar scales and similar rhythmic patterns.  We even have similar temple drums and mythical stories like Sita and Rama and Ravena and whatnot.  When you go to Indonesia, the dancers do these stories that they have in Thailand with Hanuman the monkey god of India.  So all these traditions sort of collided.  So it's possible that they all have the same roots.  So it's easy to see that Indian percussion instruments work well with these traditions. 

How do you think of rhythms?

I visualize them.  It's a riot for me.  It's like sitting on a rollercoaster and going through the dips and climbs and curves and drops.  For me it's a playland.  Like time to be in an area where you're going to drop from 30,000 feet and parachute down to Earth.  Or bungie jump.  And those are ranges of improvising in rhythm cycles.  You see a pattern emerging, and it's going by like a shinkansen, and you want to grab onto it and hold on and be part of that experience of that pattern and that speed and that tempo.  Or sometimes a pattern is like an anaconda.  But the fun part is to be able to sit on its head and ride it or catch it as it goes along and put a knife in its neck.  It's visually like that for us.  You see drummers when they're playing, they look up, mouth open or eyes wide, or eyes shut in concentration.  It's because it's a vision, not abstract or invisible.  It's all there, and they're going to ride it.  It's like they're hang-gliding and they can see the air pockets.  This is why a drummer can be thinking rhythms.  When I'm singing rhythms, I am not playing it but my mind is projecting a visual image.  So I am able to see the rise and fall and measure in that sense.  It's like using Mac ProTools to mix recordings.  You can take a beat that's as small as a dot and then you magnify it until it's a mile long.  That's what a drummer is doing when he's improvising.  He takes this beat and he's able to go right into it until it becomes the Earth itself, a whole world where he can enter and experience the contours.  And this process is so visual because the drummer can measure those lengths.  He can see that the beat is starting here and going there.  It's just one beat, but he has enough time to do this, this and this to it.

Did you find that you worked more in traditional eight beat with Kodo or did you experiment with Indian rhythm phrases and sam beat?

We do find ourselves merging on sam beat.  And speaking of eight beats, we are doing a piece in seven.  So somebody left a beat behind.  And they are so comfortable with it.  I think the Kodo drummers have really grown and not just limited themselves to the traditional rhythms.  They have gone on to be new and fresh and inspired.  It's so incredible.  You look at those drums and you say: dakadaka da kon ka dakadaka da don.  OK, yes, now what.  For a regular drummer it's like, "What more is there?  I can hear these eight beats and various attacks at various off-points, in abstract.  What more is there?"  And they have answered that question.  They have moved on and said that there is more.  They've run around the world and found traditions that they could relate to and told them that this could work with their instruments.  After the intermission we do a piece that incorporates dance.  The drummers are dancing and it looks like Brazilian style, like they are dancing the Samba.  It's there.  The question is did they always have it or did it emerge from Korea and Brazil?  Or did they collide at one time?  And Kodo says, "Yeah!  This works!"  And to be able to utilize it.  It's amazing to us a limited drum set and to be able to create a whole concert.  I can do it when I am alone because I am improvising.  But when you have twelve people or more playing you have to choreograph and synchronize like a caravan.  That's different from having your singular ride all by yourself.  Twelve different rides would be just confusion.

What do you see as the fundamental differences or similarities between taiko and tabla?

Focus, meditation, that discipline.  Look at the training regime that they have, running 10 kilometers every morrning, doing meditation.  It brings you so close to your abilities as a human.  It allows you to be able to take that ability and let it grow 100 fold because your inner strength that you've developed doing this meditation and physical training.  Similarly in India music is considered the highest form of yoga.  And when you play music or practice you are communing with God.  The common factor is this discipline or yoga that we have because of the discipline that we apply to our music.  You know we go through this 40-day chilla which is like a training that one has to do 3 times.  It's a growing process, your ability to prove that you're man enough to play the music.  So that's a process that we go through where for 20 hours a day we are in our music.  We are meditating.  We are eating diet food.  We are alone in a forest and living off the land and doing the music.  You go through visions, it's almost like being on acid.  There are a lot of musicians who have not been able to finish their 40-day chilla because they had such horrific experiences that they had to stop.  So keeping in mind that there is such a strict and demanding process that you have to go through to be an Indian drummer.  And this is a similar process to being a taiko drummer.  They are in some ways tied.  In core they are so close together in the training regime.  Of course we don't do that kind of physical training regime.  Our training regime is the inner light, the mind, focusing on spiritual strength as opposed to physical strength.  What the taiko does is takes their spiritual strength and also they work on their physical strength because of the demands of the drums they have to play.  But for us, it's all right here, in the mind.  So even though we have to work to be able to sit and play for seven hours and have the strength in our fingers and arms to be able to do it, we don't have to physically train ourselves.  We have to train our mind and spirit to be able to handle that kind of treatment.  But at the core it is that, a training of the mind, the heart, the spirit.  And these days with the advent of the microphone, we, the training-of-the-mind people, can sound big and strong and play fast and everything.  But essentially it is like a complement of the mind and the body.  Sometimes you see those old Star Treks where there are races which can communicate telekinetically and they haven't lifted a finger to do work.  It's like the sahdus who go off to the mountains and live for 20 years with their eyes closed and made their minds so strong.  It's a similar sense here.  And that's where we come together.  Apart from that old saying that rhythm is universal.  To clap your hands, you cannot give a country to it.  It isn't Japanese or Indian.  It's everywhere.

Are there other folk traditions that you think tabla would work well with?

I've worked with Senegalese Doudou N'diaye Rose and that worked very well.  And Doudou with taiko is so amazing.  They have similar traditions.  But how they work together is another question.  What the Senegalese drummers have is a drum chart that is not written, it is their leader, Doudou Rose.  And he, with his actions, will have them do all the different things.  And taiko is more planned out.  I have also worked with Korean Samulnori, that's good.  The other folk tradition that I enjoy is the Indonesian gamelan.  The gamelan is really good for Indian drumming because they have this kind of composition idea where the drummer is the leader.  He sits in the middle of the gamelan and while the gamelan is playing, he's improvising.  But he's improvising based on the composition that the gamelan is playing.  And what's exciting is the long patterns he plays because the composition is very long.  And it revolves around and comes back and it's almost like one revolution is two or three minutes long.  And in that the guy improvises and he has to have an idea of when it's going to culminate and complete his improvising idea to finish just with those guys.  And it's so Indian.  So gamelan definitely works.  And Middle-Eastern drumming traditions because we are connected through the gypsy tradition.  And flamenco.  These days tabla has crossed all boundaries.  You hear it in movies, TV, techno, raves, jungle, rock, jazz.  This is the one instrument that you see everywhere.  Bill Laswell and I have worked on a CD called Tabla Beat Science where we have used techno and all these other traditions like rave and jungle with tabla as the principle instrument.  So even that is possible. Tabla has grown to fit into any category.  I came here a few years ago to play with jazz artist Kazumi Watanabe and Asuka Kaneko.  But I also played with a pop singer known as Tokiko Kato singing "Waltzing Matilda."  Tabla just fits into everything.  It's an instrument of the world now.  It's a little more technically difficult to play than the conga or the bongo which have also been instruments of the world.  Tabla is now the one that is being played everywhere.  I am very happy that people like us get to travel and work with taiko.  I went to Kodo Village and I just wanted to live there for the next ten years!

Are you planning to have your own commune for drums?

I do already.  Every year I do a festival in India where I have drummers come to perform from around the world.  That's February 3rd in Bombay.  We webcast it so you can see it from anywhere in the world.