Zakir Hussain, the acknowledged master of the Indian tabla, and Niladri Kumar, the young star sitarist, are at the very top of their form, and together represent the very essence of music: rhythm and melody. Their every performance is an opportunity for transcendent flights of musical imagination grounded in one of the world’s great musical traditions, Northern Indian (“Hindustani”) classical music. What Ravi Shankar and Hussain’s father Ustad Allarakha introduced to America in the 1950s and in particular at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock—a thousand-year-old tradition of matchless interaction between drummer and melody player—has passed to the best imaginable hands.

WMI's MASTERS OF INDIAN MUSIC series presents legends from the two primary forms of Indian classical music: the Northern Indian tradition of Hindustani classical music and the Southern Indian tradition of Carnatic Indian classical music.