Zakir Hussain is almost worshipped as a god by many on this Earth and it's not hard to see, or rather to hear, why, given my listening to Graham Harman's recommended album, Magical Moments of Rhythm.
The best that I can say about it right now, having only just started to hear it, is that he plays in a terrifyingly multidimensional way. There is just so much you can do in the possibility space of tala.
Listening to Zakir Hussain is not unlike playing with fire. You want to watch another piece of the world go up in flames but you are a little scared that this time the flame will burn your arm. Fire spreads out in three dimensions, like this music—unlike western music, whose fire burns along a pretty straight fuse most of the time.
It's here that I must digress only slightly to celebrate a philosopher who's rocked my world in a lot of ways, including this one—Graham himself. Happy birthday mate.
Yes, Hussain is a monster. I once heard him live when he was traveling with Mickey Hart's Planet Drum. There was another guy on that show who impressed me deeply, though I forget his name. He played a large clay pot that he held cradled in his crossed legs, a ghatam.
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He and Hussain got into a duel. Hussain had more flash an fire. But Clay Pot Man beat him on Resonance.