‘The Einstein of Rhythm:’ Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart Remembers Zakir Hussain

Mickey Hart was with Zakir Hussain right until “the moment that he left this plane” on Dec. 15 at the age of 73– as well he should have been.

The Grateful Dead percussionist and Indian tabla master were tight, as friends and as musicians. They met in 1970 when Hussain’s father, Allarakha Qureshi, sent Hussain to knock on Hart’s tour and begin an association that started with Hart’s first solo album, Rolling Thunder in 1972, and continued until Hussain’s death, when the two were still working on a project that includes tuned hand drums, drones and sonic bathing. In between were Grammy Award-winning works as Planet Drum and the Global Drum Project, as well the Diga Rhythm Band in 1976 and number of other collaborations on Hart albums such as 1990’s At the Edge and Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box in 1996.

Hussain’s legacy also includes four Grammy Awards (three of them earlier this year), founding membership in the fusion band Shakiti and recordings with Pharoah Sanders, Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer, John Handy, L. Shankar Charles Lloyd and more. Hussain also taught at Princeton University and Stanford University and received a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Mumbai.

Hart tells Billboard that “the shock is still with us” from Hussain’s passing, but he was happy to share the great memories he has of his friend and fellow rhythmist.

“You talk about someone who is a great rhythm master, you have to start with Zakir. He was an enormous influence on all genres, considering he crossed more borders, musically, than anybody I’ve ever met or known in history. There is no one that has traveled as far to do so much than Zakir, because he was constantly on the road, constantly spreading the rhythm seeds everywhere he went. Maybe every 1,000 years you get somebody like Zakir. He was the Mozart of his instrument, one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, a great tabla player and a great rhythmist. Zakir can play everything from spoons to his nose — he can play nose flute like a maniac, he does it all.

“He comes from a lineage of drummers, so it’s part of his DNA. He’s born to drums, so he was nurtured as a baby, when his father recited rhythms in his ear as an infant. Allarakha was my mentor, my teacher. I met him when Phil Lesh gave me a record called Drums of North and South India; he handed it to me and said, ‘You should hear this. This is for you,’ or something like that. When I listened to it I was just riveted. I really heard it, and I was never the same after that. It contained Allarakha, and I couldn’t believe what he was playing. It influenced a lot of Grateful Dead music because of the unusual time signatures…those kind of very complicated rhythmic gems that we really practiced for long periods of time to learn. I found (Allarakha) in New York in 1967, and he became my teacher.

“Then in 1970 Zakir knocked on my door; his father sent him to me because his father comes from the analog world, quiet, and Zakir was a young man when I met him. We lived together for awhile, and we really bonded and he opened himself up to the feel and the rhythms of the West. He was very strict — as he should have been from north Indian classical music where you’re supposed to be very accurate and everything is composed and traditional, ancient rhymes that are codified and only played one way, by everybody. In the West it was loud music and a new kind of rhythm, kind of funkier than he had played in the past, and he accepted that. I play that serpentine kind of way, move in and out of the groove and it slips and slide and everybody goes with it; that makes for an amazing, living creature as opposed to a pre-ordained rhythm.

“So he opened himself up to the West and he flourished in it. He loved it. We played together like it was meant to be. For me to be playing these north Indian classical rhythms was very difficult at first; it took months, years to come up to a level where Zakir was. He kinda came down and I went up and we met in the middle, that kind of thing. But it was very resonant; we felt love in the groove, and the groove was deep. He and his father both played on Rolling Thunder, my first solo work, and we went on to do so many records together. He was a colleague and a rhythm master, and our deep friendship translated into rhythm — I would say bliss is a good word to describe how it feels when we play together.

“It’s hard to say who he influenced — anybody who ever heard him, let’s put it that way, was not the same. A lot of people can’t understand him, but they can feel him. They hear someone with great passion playing rhythms they’ve never heard before. He’s the Einstein of rhythm — that’s a good way of thinking of him as a rhythmist and what he could do and speak in the rhythm language. He’s way above any other percussionist or rhythmist I’ve worked with on this planet. Maybe there’s somebody better on Mars, but not on earth — and I’ve heard a lot of them.

“Jerry (Garcia) joined us for At the Edge (1990). Jerry and Zakir got along really well. Jerry noticed immediately who he was and Zakir, of course, just loved Jerry’s musical style. The banjo, of course, is like a rhythm instrument and Jerry plays the guitar like a banjo. A lot of the bluegrass instruments work perfectly within Indian rhythms because of the nature of it, three against two, all these intertwining rhythms that go on in banjo playing and also in tabla. And, of course, that explains (Hussein’s) Bela Fleck collaboration, because of course he’s a master banjoist, or banjolero.

“(Hussein)’s just a very kind man, and he plays like that, too. He’s really good as a composer as well, and arranger. He can do it all. He can play anything, but he’s a kind man — very thoughtful, unbelievably generous. He started to teach in the 70s; he had thousands of students all over the world and he dedicated himself to teaching hem the traditional rhythms. He traveled everywhere, constantly; even when we were on tour, if we had three days off he would go to India to conduct the national symphony or accept the greatest honor and come back for sound check on Monday. He was able to travel long distances, and he had this system of meditation he would so he wouldn’t get jet lag, and that increased his proficiency. He was able to perform more and travel because of that. He just wouldn’t stop.

“We’re starting to unearth so much of what we never got (released), never hit the street, which is voluminous. You’ve got to remember we’ve been recording since 1970, so there’s a lot of Zakir Hussein, and you bet I’d like to work on a Zakir Hussein compilation and keep his music alive, and that’s what I’m about to do.”

In the meantime, Hart and Grateful Dead mates Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann will be featured on CBS’ broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors, where they were feted on Dec. 8, on Dec. 22. “It was surprisingly a lot of fun, and profound in many ways,” Hart says of the ceremony, where the Dead men were celebrated alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and The Apollo theater. “It was nice to be honored, but it was not essential. It’s hard to be honored for something that it’s a privilege to do, you know? You don’t do it for medals…but it was a great show for the arts, to be able to show how powerful (it is) and that music can cover so much ground in so many different ways.”

The group’s current incarnation, Dead & Company, will become the first act to launch a second residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, with an 18-show Dead Forever — Live At Sphere that starts March 20. The six-weekend run will celebrated Dead & Company’s 10th anniversary, and Hart promises “all new compositions and ‘Drums and Space,’” that will build on what the group did earlier this year. “

“If you’re in a place for a long enough period of time you start to learn the room; you play the room as if the room is your instrument,” Hart explains. “We’re just playing it loose and playing it from the heart, and we serve the music. That’s what musicians do. We’re just working musicians, and Sphere is such a great place to work.”