I wrote a blip of an article in the New York Times this week about a percussion performance at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. We have a monthly feature for singling out musical moments, not in the form of a review so much as a spotlight on an aspect of a performance we can’t stop thinking about.

The full concert by Third Coast Percussion on February 27 included Jlin’s scintillating “Please Be Still,” a haunting “Lady Justice / Black Justice, The Song” by Jessie Montgomery and Tigran Hamasyan’s sensuous Sonata for Percussion. From a purely where-can-I-hear-that-again point of view, that last one was my favorite piece on the whole program.

But I was unexpectedly moved by “Murmurs in Time” by the late tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain. He passed away last December, after recording this work (scored for tabla and percussion quartet) with Third Coast. At Zankel one of his students, Salar Nader, took on the tabla part.

Near the beginning, there is a section when the performers don’t seem to do much at all. The stage is littered with objects to hit made of wood, metal and skin, as well as implements for striking them so that the impact results in a maximum array of sounds. But in this first movement, these instruments barely see action. Instead, the musicians speak their beat patterns in conversational tones using bols, the standardized syllables from North Indian classical music that are used to memorize and learn rhythms. (The clip below is of the shimmering second movement where everyone gets busy with the tools of their craft. For an example of virtuosic vocal percussion, scroll to Robert Battle’s choreography “Takademe” at the very bottom of this post.)

In a video screened moments earlier at Zankel, Hussain could be seen speaking about his father, a revered tabla master in his own time. When Zakir was born, the infant was placed in his arms so the father could speak a prayer over his son as was the custom among Muslims in India. But instead of a blessing, his father whispered rhythms into his ear.

As I watched the five musicians weave intricate rhythms with their voices, I kept thinking about the musical legacy this parental prophecy had set in motion. And I thought of the disdain Western music has long had for rhythm, an attitude only highlighted in the last century when drum-forward dance music split from the self-declared art of the concert hall. How much of this split comes from an unspoken view that drumming emanates from a childlike desire to hit things and make noise, impulses most of us unlearn as we grow into socially competent adults? What if the art of rhythm-making was instead rooted in human language and — as in the case of Hussain — love?

Don’t get me wrong: the fuck-yeah delight that comes with seeing someone thrash objects on stage in performance is real. How many of us don’t wish we could hit things safely and, in the process, still fit in with our chosen bandmates in life?

But the fascination with rhythm goes deeper than a desire to make noise. It viscerally unites body and mind. It begins with a pulse that connects to the timekeeper of our own heartbeat and represents pure life force. As that pulse is subdivided, patterns form that have all the beauty of a mathematical formula. To hear a pulse prism into complex rhythms is akin to seeing fractals in nature —say, a river delta viewed from the air, or the silhouette of a tree in winter. It points to a higher intelligence beyond, or embedded in, nature, depending on your belief system. It suggests we belong to an ordered and rational universe.

I think that’s why for all that is exciting and stimulating about percussion music, its practice also has the potential to ground us. And it might mean that whispering rhythms is actually a perfectly rational way to reassure and welcome a new human into this world.

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