No Scandal Here: Zakir Hussain Returns to UCLA with Masters of Percussion

There’s nothing like a little Indian classical music to relieve all the stress you’re experiencing from the hoopla surrounding the Mueller Report. The cathartic nature of Zakir Hussain’s work would certainly make you forget about the recent college admissions scandal, as well – even though his Masters of Percussion show will be held at Royce Hall, the state-of-the-art performing arts venue at UCLA, one of the campuses implicated in recent pay-to-play scheme to get students of certain wealthy families into certain universities.

This story, of course, is not about politics or bombshell news events, but instead of India’s greatest musicians, a man who will be banging his hands on tabla like no one else in this world. Hussain’s hands will indeed creating musical notes and serenading high-brow lovers of Indian classical music at UCLA on March 28 – and for a short while no one will be thinking about what’s happening outside the walls of Royce Hall.

Masters of Percussion, which Hussain curates every other year, started in 1996 as a family affair. Hussain and his father would tour together, delivering Indian classical music performances across the country. Hussain’s father has since passed away, but Masters of Percussion, through tabla’s living legend, continues. This year’s is particularly special for Hussain, as the tour coincides with the 100-year anniversary of his father’s birth (in April).

“It’s a celebration of his centenary,” Hussain proudly said. Part of the celebration includes expanding the Masters of Percussion umbrella, with Hussain bringing non-Indian artists to the fold (such as Uzbek, Middle Eastern and jazz drummers). India, of course, will still be featured in Masters of Percussion – not only via Hussain, but also through a Kerala-based musical group; the group almost never performs outside of their village, according to Hussain. (Kerala, by the way, is a state in the south of India.)

His upcoming UCLA show is intended to be a dialog between him and the artists he brings onto the stage, be it the Kerala villagers, Rahul Sharma (his stage mate at UCLA in 2017), Uzbek drummers or whoever else is privileged enough to share a stage with Hussain.

Those stage-mates, however, provide Hussain with an opportunity to expand his art and push the limits of music. Pairings some might have thought of as impossible a decade or two ago–Indian classical and modern jazz, for example–are now joining together to find new heights. Challenging perceived artistic barriers is what excites Hussain and the tabla virtuoso will certainly be displaying his border-challenging ways on state at Royce Hall.

Also drawing the tabla virtuoso’s attention: connecting with his audience and performing in venues where generations of artists before him had performed. One of those venues was Bharat Bhavan, one of the oldest concert venues in India. The venue is located in Bhopal, which is one of India’s most culturally significant cities. Hussain marveled at the architecture and antiquity of Bharat Bhavan, where he performed only a few short weeks ago. The separation between audience and stage is virtually non-existent, Hussain explained.

“It’s just a tabla concert … and [thousands] of people show up. It was like performing amongst friends. Of course Bhopal is making a huge comeback as a city to visit,” Hussain tells the Weekly.

Venues in the United States don’t quite measure up to performances spaces like Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, particularly when it comes to antiquity, but there are concert halls here where Hussain likes to perform, nonetheless.

“When you look at America, it’s relatively a new country. For it to have venues that harp back to the old days is very difficult,” Hussain said, bringing up a 2,100-year-old venue in France where he once performed.

“It’s still there, the way it was. They have preserved it,” Hussain said. “The sound is amazing. In those days they had to build these open amphitheaters to be able to have the sound that could reach everyone. Compared to that, we don’t have anything as spectacular in the United States.”

The concert halls he admired here in the United States, nonetheless, included the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, Carnegie Hall in New York and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Hussain also praised the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the newest venues he’s performed at; the tabla virtuoso specifically praised Schermerhorn’s acoustics.

One of the venues on Hussain’s current tour is Chicago Symphony Hall, which he likened to Carnegie Hall.

“America can boast it has great concert halls, spread across its length and breadth, that can compete with any old opera house in Europe,” Hussain said.

UCLA’s Royce Hall, where Hussain’s Los Angeles stop takes place on March 28, can be a difficult place for drumming shows, due to the venue’s high ceilings. But managing the performance, both with the number of artists on stage (two) and bringing along a knowledgeable sound engineer, helped Hussain avoid his music from being muddied.

Tickets, which range from $29 to $69, are still available through UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. Visit cap.ucla.edu/calendar/details/zakir_hussain_masters_of_percussion for more information.