Since Executive & Artistic Director Rob Gibson took the helm of the Savannah Music Festival several years ago, the sounds of India have played a prominent role in subsequent installments of the celebrated annual traditional and roots-based musical showcase.

Whether it was 2005’s ground-breaking East Meets West concert featuring British classical violinist Daniel Hope, Florida’s own slide guitar whiz Derek Trucks and a bevy of famed Indian ethnic musicians including Amaan Ali Bangash, Ayaan Ali Bangash, Gaurav Mazumadar and Sandeep Das, or 2007’s headlining performance by acclaimed female sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar, or the blistering 2008 program World of Slide Guitar, which found U.S. dobro icon Jerry Douglas and steel guitar legend Bob Brozman collaborating with their hero Debashish Bhattacharya, Savannah Music Fest audiences have been treated to dazzling displays by many of India’s most acclaimed and legendary musical masters.

That tradition continues with the 2009 SMF’s highly anticipated appearance by the world-famous duo of tabla drummer Zakir Hussain and santoor virtuoso Shivkumar Sharma.

Two of India’s most beloved composers and instrumentalists, they will be joined in concert by the aforementioned Daniel Hope, in yet another of the SMF’s trademark one-night-only concert events.

The show, entitled Maestros in Concert, focuses squarely on the Hindustani tradition of Indian classical music, which is distinctly different from Western classical music in many key regards. If you’re not a fan of symphonic or chamber music, you may find that you’d actually love Indian classical music like nobody’s business.

It’s a vibrant, ever-changing and somewhat unpredictable mélange of droning, repetitive rhythms, swirling harmonic overtones and lightning-fast percussion and fretwork that has much in common with certain types of psychedelic rock or jam music, as well as some of the more regimented jazz fusion.

It’s not uncommon for audience members to find themselves drawn inward into a contemplative and near trancelike state while listening to the seemingly freeform compositions.

I say seemingly, because in reality, while there is a certain amount of improvisation going on, these stellar musicians are actually operating within a fairly strict framework — albeit one that may be unfamiliar to the ears of folks weaned on the 4/4 beats of American and British rock and pop.

“There are certain dos and don’ts,” explains Hussain, when contacted at Grammy-winning banjo player Bela Fleck’s home (where the two are currently hard at work on a new album).

“You have been given a certain scale to play, which is a Rāga. You cannot use notes that are not in that scale, and the rhythmic cycle has a certain number of beats. As long as you work within those parameters, you are allowed to open the Pandora’s Box and see what you can find in it.

“As musicians, we have to be aware of each other — and at times, you’ll be playing a piece of music and you’ll do something that feels interesting for about five minutes. Then you’ll finish and look at your watch and realize it has really been 50 minutes! That’s why Indian classical music can be anywhere from one-and-a-half hours long to five hours long. It’s a little like going to a Grateful Dead show.

“The whole point is to take that journey together as musicians or brothers or friends, or whatever. Sometimes you connect so beautifully that a five hour journey goes by in an instant. That’s what playing Indian music is all about.”

So, I wonder, is it difficult for the musicians themselves to not become so lost in the moment that they “lose” or forget the arrangement of the tune and wind up making some sort of innocent mistake that send the whole thing spiraling into chaos?

Not at all, says Hussain.

“There really is no arrangement to forget,” he says with a sly laugh.

“That trancelike state —or the sensation of being transported into a whole different zone of time and space— is something that a musician tries to achieve in Indian music, because the music itself is so open it allows us to explore at will and forget the parameters that do exist.”

If anyone would know, it would be Zakir Hussain. Son of the famed tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha (who played alongside sitar superstar Ravi Shankar for decades), the 57-year-old sensation was born in Bombay and began playing this deceptively complex melodic percussion instrument professionally when he was barely in his teens.

Described by many as a child prodigy, he quickly ascended the ranks of “name” tabla players, becoming a top draw as a live concert artist, and recording numerous sessions for Bollywood soundtracks. In later years, he would be tapped to compose the scores for many motion pictures, including features directed by such international cinema icons as Ismail Merchant and Bernardo Bertolucci (such as Bertolucci’s Little Buddha). That’s also Hussain you can hear playing tablas on the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s landmark film Apocalypse Now.

He now maintains a busy touring schedule which finds him playing upwards of 160 dates a year around the globe, while still managing to hold down guest teaching positions at both Princeton and Stanford Universities.

Looking back, he can still recall vividly what led him to the tablas.

“I think mainly I did it just to be close to my dad,” he admits.

“I started originally because he played, and I saw the kind of attention and love that was showered on him and the reverence with which people looked at him. It made me very proud of him and it also made me realize I was part of something that was very special. I wanted to be closer to it.

“It was him more than anything that pushed me into this. His energy, and the fact that he wasn’t paying any attention to me. My mother wanted me to go off to school and was taking my tablas away from me. So, I had to play on pots and pans! (laughs) You know how it is when something is taken away from you. You wind up seeking it more.”

However, there was another very tangible (and practical) benefit to being an extremely gifted musician. 

“When I was 12 years old and played my first professional concert in India, I made my first 100 rupees. I looked at that and said, whoah, I was not only applauded, but I was given money? This could work! In those days, that was a lot of money for a kid that was going to school and begging his mom for five rupees to have snacks at recess. It didn’t really sink in until about four years later. My father was working and performing and just getting by. I was going to school in the day and playing concerts at night and doing Bollywood sessions in between. Within five months, I earned the 20,000 rupees we needed to move into a nicer condominium.

“When my father returned and moved into the new place, the pride he had to see that I had been able to help out with this, I still think about it. When he walked into that place, I decided then and there that this was gonna be it for me.”

In fact, the musician and mentor who would frequently drive Hussain to his Bollywood soundtrack sessions was none other than Shivkumar Sharma, the Indian hammered dulcimer master he’ll perform with at the Savannah Music Fest. Theirs is a lifelong friendship that has produced a wide body of wonderful music both on stage and on record.

Hussain says that the bond between these two musicians runs as deep as family for him.

“You know how it is that somewhere along the line you find somebody who helps you to shape the way you’re gonna be? In this case, it is an artist who helped me to shape my way of playing. Sharma is ten years older than me, but we both started at about the same time. He was a tabla player first, so he understands my world.

“We have been connected for so long in an intimate manner. His generous attitude of allowing me to find my way through the repertoire and develop my own ‘package’ —for lack of a better word— is what’s great about our relationship. He’s one of the guys whose shoulder I stood on to find the shelf that had the stuff I needed as a tabla player. Not only that, but he comes from the same part of India that I do and we share the same kind of language in that way.  There are one or two musicians I always look forward to paying with in the whole world and he is one of them.”

Hussain also has high praise for the SMF’s Daniel Hope, who can often be found sitting in with a variety of Festival headliners from a variety of genres. The two have worked together briefly in the past, and Hussain is confident Hope has the chops to hold his own in a style of music vastly different from what the classically-trained violinist is primarily known for.

“Western classical musicians play beautifully, but they have the charts in front of them,” explains Hussain.

“Most of the time, they shy away from improvising. So, it’s often difficult for Indian musicians to work with those from the West. When Daniel and I played together before, we were able to climb that hurdle easily — because he is an artist who is not afraid of falling flat on his face! That’s what we do in India. Sometimes it is magical, and sometimes it is so horrible you want to run away. Daniel is not only one of the best classical violinists around, he is able to relax and take his own sweet time.”

Maestros in Concert: Zakir Hussain & Shivkumar Sharma with special guest, Daniel Hope

When: Tuesday, 8 pm

Where: Lucas Theatre

Cost: $25 - $55 adv.

Info: savannahmusicfestival.org