Zakir Hussain, Tabla Virtuoso Who Fused Musical Traditions, Dies at 73

Zakir Hussain, a percussionist and composer who was both a master of North Indian classical music and a linchpin of far-reaching world-music fusions, died on Saturday in San Francisco. He was 73.

His death, in a hospital, was from the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, his family said in a statement. He lived in the Bay Area.

Mr. Hussain earned the honorific Ustad, given to Muslim virtuosos of Hindustani (North Indian) classical music. He performed and recorded extensively with leading Indian musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Shivkumar Sharma. His main instrument was the tabla, the tuned drums that accompany Indian classical ragas, but he also played many other traditional and modern instruments.

Mr. Hussain’s work reached well beyond the Indian classical tradition to forge global musical hybrids. With the English jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, the Indian violinist L. Shankar and the Indian percussionist T.H. Vinayakram, he formed the group Shakti in 1973. Shakti was not only an East-West fusion, but also, with its two percussionists, a fusion of North and South Indian rhythms.

Mr. McLaughlin, Mr. Hussain and three other Indian musicians regrouped as Shakti to record the 2023 album “This Moment”; it won a Grammy Award this year for best global music album.

Mr. Hussain shared two more Grammys this year — for global music performance and contemporary instrumental album — for the album “As We Speak,” a collaboration by Mr. Hussain, the banjo player Béla Fleck, the bassist Edgar Meyer and the Indian bansuri (bamboo flute) player Rakesh Chaurasia.