For Hussain, destiny was not a dying breath it was a morning song, a patriarchs auspicious prophecy.
And so, a virtuoso was born.
His talent was fierce and precocious, nurtured by his father from an early age.
Zakir Hussain in 1996Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
Hussain played his first concert when he was just seven years old, and began touring at 12.
Hussains collaborations with Western musical legends went far beyond the psychedelic haze of the West Coast and the Dead.
I cant thank George enough for straightening me out.
In 1979, Hussain even worked withFrancis Ford Coppola, lending a hand with the soundtrack forApocalypse Now.
The performance was sold out, and the 500-person crowd was almost entirely made up of diasporic South Asians.
The air with which he played was restrained yet frenzied, candid yet occult.
There were no pretensions of showmanship, no displays of braggadocio just the hollow ringing of palms on goatskin.
The same applies here.
They brought only good, and they will be sorely missed.
