Zakir Hussain

LP version. Making Music brought four improvisers from two traditions into an Oslo studio at the end of 1986. Tabla player Zakir Hussain led the date with the flutes of Hariprasad Chaurasia, the acoustic guitar of John McLaughlin and the saxophones of Jan Garbarek. Released by ECM in 1987 with little advance notice, it sets four equals in conversation. No instrument is cast as soloist and none as accompanist.

Hussain, son of the tabla master Alla Rakha, had played with McLaughlin since 1973 in Shakti, the acoustic band that joined Indian classical music and jazz. Garbarek had already worked with Indian musicians at ECM, among them the violinist L. Shankar. The session took place in December 1986 at Rainbow Studio, produced by Manfred Eicher and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug. Hussain also plays percussion and uses his voice. Six of the eight pieces are his, while McLaughlin wrote Zakir and co-wrote You and Me.

The title track runs past twelve minutes and opens on Chaurasia's flute alone, with the tabla entering only once the melody has taken shape. Zakir, McLaughlin's dedication to the leader, is a dialogue between guitar and flute over warm harmonies. In Anisa and Sunjog Garbarek comes forward, bending his long saxophone lines towards the inflections of Indian vocal music. On the short You and Me guitar and tabla play as a duo.

The record was well received from the start. The Philadelphia Tribune (1987) heard "the most successful bridging of south Asian music and jazz in recent years, a hybrid that diminishes neither." The German magazine Stereo made it record of the month, and in DownBeat Bill Milkowski wrote: "This is a very beautiful album." Not everyone agreed, as AllMusic's Michael G. Nastos found that the group fell short of its potential. Decades later Songlines described the meeting as one that set a high bar for later East-West collaborations. Hussain died in December 2024, a year before this reissue.

LP edition of ECM 1349, first released in 1987, back on vinyl for the first time since then in a tip-on gatefold. It is part of Luminessence, ECM's vinyl series launched in 2023 to reissue titles from the label's back catalogue in high-quality editions.