I’ve been in rooms where beauty and horror held hands and French-kissed. But you know those nights, the ones that grab you by the throat and won’t let go? The ones where you’re sitting there in the dark and something happens that makes you forget you’re supposed to be the asshole taking photos?
The dancers moved like Hussain’s fingers were puppeteering their souls. I’m not waxing poetic here, I mean it literally looked like the sound was moving them, like rhythm had become gravity and they were falling up. Hussain sat there, hands a blur, pulling sounds out of those drums that I didn’t know existed. Sounds that felt like they were coming from inside your own chest.
Meanwhile Alonzo’s choreography… bodies doing things bodies shouldn’t do. Defying physics like physics owed them money.
I took a lot of photos for LINES over the years. Probably too many. But this one from, that night, this one is maybe my favorite of anything I’ve ever shot for them. Maybe my favorite period. It captures… something. I’m not sure if anyone else sees this photo the way I see it. Feel it. I don’t know if what I see is really there or if it’s just my imagination spooning my memories. If my memories are cracking open meanings that don’t exist for anyone else. If I’m seeing ghosts because I need to see ghosts.
You know what? Fuck it. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
This was a retrospective, a “look what we built” kind of evening. Twenty years of two masters from completely different worlds pushing each other, challenging each other, making something that belonged to neither tradition completely and somehow belonged to both entirely.
I talked with Zakir afterwards. He was always generous and warm. You shoot the shit, you say the things you say. You never think it’s the last time. You never think: remember this, remember his face, remember the sound of his laugh. You just assume there’s always going to be a next time.
Addendum added December 24, 2024
A little over a year later they’d announced Scheherazade is coming back. The collaboration remounted in the Spring. The thing they’d built together. And now Zakir is gone.
Dead.
Some collaborations, you realize way too fucking late, were miracles. Were lightning strikes. Were things you witnessed and somehow, stupidly, took for granted because you thought beauty like that was reproducible. Renewable.
It’s not.
Celebration of Alonzo King & Zakir Hussain. Hussain’s mastery of classical Indian percussion brought him a Grammy award and worldwide renown. His collaborations with Alonzo King renew classical forms, holding respect for the old and ushering in the new with a keen eye for innovation.