The 'Mozart' of the Tabla, Winner of Four Grammys

The virtuoso of Indian hand drums played with the Grateful Dead, Herbie Hancock, Béla Fleck, Yo-Yo Ma and George Harrison, then went back to earn respect in his homeland.

- JON MOOALLEM

"IT WAS A CONSPIRACY," the virtuosic Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain joked, when asked by the BBC to explain his genesis as a percussionist. "I was not at all a part of it." It began when Hussain was 2 days old, just home from the hospital. His father, the legendary tabla player Alla Rakha, started singing rapid, elaborate rhythms in Hussain's ear. Parents were encouraged to sing prayers to their newborns.

"But for him," Hussain said, those traditional rhythms "were religious words, spiritual mantras." Hussain died Dec. 15 at age 73 in San Francisco of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. He was regarded as the greatest tabla player of his generation, known for playing the tuned hand drums with astonishing sensitivity and blistering speed. Through his cross-cultural collaborations with artists ranging from Yo-Yo Ma to the Grateful Dead, Hussain opened wild new frontiers for his instrument and expanded the imprint of Indian traditions on Western music.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that Hussain was "a true genius who revolutionized the world of Indian classical music" and "brought the tabla to the global stage." Hussain is survived by his wife, Antonia Minnecola, and their two daughters.

Lessons at 3 a.m.

A child prodigy, Hussain started learning tabla formally from his father at age 7. Lessons took place at 3 a.m. The following day at school, Hussain would either be tapping away on the wooden benches to practice or falling asleep on them.

From the time he was a teenager, Hussain played with the greatest living masters of Indian classical music, including sitarist Ravi Shankar who bestowed him with the honorific "Ustad," a title reserved in Hindustani music for Muslim virtuosos.

Hussain's musical ambitions were restlessly eclectic.