Fasal Qureshi tries a different beat

A student from Canada enters Fazal Qureshi's riyaz room, bows to touch his feet and then pays respect to the photograph of his guru's father, Ustad Alla Rakha Khan. He then takes his place with six other students (old and young alike) who are busy practising the tabla. And the interview doesn't deter the Ustad from personally supervising his students. The tabla maestro who is gearing up for Mega drums, a music concert on April 29, talks to CS about fusion music:


Who: Fazal Qureshi
What: Talks about the magic of fusion
Where: In his riyaz room in Matunga

Fully fusion
In spite of being from a hardcore classical background, my family has always been open to fusion. In fact, my father was amongst the first tabla players to collaborate with jazz artists. And of course, I grew up listening to Zakir bhai's performances with jazz musicians like John McLaughlin, Mickey Hart, etc. So I had an eternal urge to do something differentu00a0-- something that had my family's stamp, yet my own flavour to it. So it all started in 1979. While I was studying in St Xavier's, we had gone to Delhi for a competition. I was accompanied by a friend who played the guitar. While we were rehearsing, he suddenly started playing The Beatles and Willy Jones on his guitar and I joined him on my tabla. It was so amazing, that in the entire college gathered to listen to us. That was my first experiment with fusion.

Handling pressure
My first international collaboration was in 1987 with a Swedish group called Minta. Till then, I was only doing national level concerts. But my basics were strong because I was constantly rehearsing jazz and classical music. But when you are burdened with expectations, things become difficult. I had a family name and their standard to maintain. So to overcome the pressure from the audience, I played a trick. I would convince the host of the concert to announce my name and not my background. My trick worked. People would hear me and would come to compliment me backstage. This trick helped me perform pressure-free.u00a0

Press rewind
While people might frown at fusion music, they don't realise that it dates back to the Vedic times. When the Mughals came to India, they brought in Persian music. The new style of music was called Khayal. This was the period when Indian music got its treasured instruments like tabla, sitar, sarod, sarangi etc. Then during the British Raj, Indian music was exposed to western music, and what we see now is the result of that exposure. So there's no reason why we should look down upon fusion.