 My Christmas. Happy Christmas. What's that from? It's a vine. It's an old vine. Oh, I know I'd seen that somewhere. You used to know vine pretty well, didn't you? I'm pretty vine famous. It's true. Hey, welcome back to our Stupid Directions. You did some Corbin. I'm Rick Instagram, Twitter, more juicy content. It's so juicy. I'm Patreon, follow Twitter, Instagram, ring the bell below, link in the description below. My granddaughter finds this fascinating. What? You ready? Oh, this. If I just do stuff like this, like I go, she's just tripping. Babies are all so fascinated by pooping. Well, aren't we all? Today we're doing a, this is called Berkeley Indian Ensemble featuring Ustad G. Zackeer Hussain. Say this. Adagy and me live at Harvard. So the tribute concert, Zackeer Hussain meets Berkeley, incorporated a myriad of musical elements from Zackeer G's life's journey, varying in styles, instrumentation and presentation. Zackeer G. do a spoken word piece and tribute to his father, Ustad Alakari Koreshi, considering that 2019 was the centenary year of his father's birth. This piece was only partially prepared with some basic piano motifs, vocal and string lines pre-composed, the rest being improvised in the moment, flowing with Zackeer G's telling stories about his dear father. Fantastic. What's Zackeer G? What's G? It's a, it's a sir. It's G means sir. Okay. Yeah. Like you'll hear it a lot that everything will be followed with a G and it's a, it's sir. G means something else here. Like I'm a G. That's a different guy than G. Certified gangster. Yeah, here we go. We know him. We've had the honor of seeing him perform a lot of He's our DOS. The DOS, D-O-S-T. Yeah. The very first lesson that I received from my father guru was that I should just try to be a good student and forget about trying to be a master. The learning process, he said, continues from the day you come to this earth and till the day you die. He told me that I should not forget that if I think that I have learned everything there is to learn that I would have to probably just hang up my boots and retire. The quest for perfection is just that. It's a quest. It is a journey that must be taken, but taken with all the vigor, strength, discipline and joy. It must never be work or chore. It must be something that you enjoy doing, something that you love to do, something that you always look forward to. The learning began on the very first day that I was brought home from the hospital. Whisper a prayer in his ear, said my mother to my father. He put his lips to my ear and whispered and then it was the rhythm mantra was put into my ear. My mother was livid. She was like, you should be deciding a prayer in this ear. Why are you singing these rhythms? In his ear. He looked at her and said, this is the prayer I want him to remember. This is the prayer I want him to recite when he wakes in the morning and recite again when he goes to sleep. This is what he will be. This is his destiny. It was decided. My path was set. It was already put into place where I was going to go, what path I was to follow and where, in which direction, the horizon lay. Just as transfixed. Yeah. It reminded me of when we got the pleasure of not only talking to him but hearing him play. He's such a well-spoken man and he speaks from the heart. He's so humble. For being a master. He won't like that term. He won't, but there is no other word for it. I guess it means the same thing. He's such a well-spoken man and it shows in how his father taught him as well. Yeah. And we have, I don't believe, have had the pleasure. Well, no, we saw one thing. It was a concert here, right? Yes. We've seen one thing with his dad. It was a concert of some sort with his father. But yeah, there's something special about father-son. No, yeah. Relationship. And two things. One about the beginning, one about the end. At the beginning, when he's talking about the first lesson about always being a student, it reminded me of an ancient wisdom thing that Howard Fine said last night. Howard Fine, are you taking his class? And he said the student was with a master and saying, how soon before I become a master? And he said, well, it was going to take you at least 20 years. He said, okay, but what if I do twice as much work each week? Well, I'd do it in 10 years. He said, no, if you do it twice as fast, it'll take you 25. What if I do it three times as fast? It'll take you 30. I don't understand, master. If I do twice as much work and three times as much work, why wouldn't I get there faster? The master said to the student, because your focus is on the end goal, rather than on the journey. Your focus should be on the steps of each day. Then it'll take you 20 years. But if your focus is on just reaching the goal, you'll work twice as hard and it's going to take you twice as long. And that's, because the point is to want to be learning and going on the journey and not thinking, I'm going to reach the penultimate end. And I think maybe my favorite thing about this whole thing, he sat in front of all of those instruments that he is truly, if anyone was the living embodiment of percussion and rhythm. It's a Stadi Zekir Hussein. And he was giving a tribute to the man who brought him into the world, spoke rhythm into his life. He didn't do one thing on those instruments, but let them sit there in honor of his dad. That was magnificent. That prayer his father gave him was just beautiful. Right when he did, I'm like, Oh, yeah, me too. Me too. And I could see it. It's like I was seeing a short film in my head and the visuals of the cards with those photographs. That was just an absolutely beautiful tribute to his dad. Beautiful. Yeah, you realize how special, you don't realize it as a kid, how special your relationship is with both your mother and your father, right? Yeah, you don't realize it until you get older. And then you have kids, how special that relationship or like if you even before you have kids, when you move away, and they're no longer there anymore. Yes. Yeah. My dad, I remember my dad used to always say to me, we get off the phone because my dad's lived in New York. Most of my adult life and most of my adult life I've lived away from him. And we hang up the phone. And I'd say, I love you. And he'd say, I love you more. And I'd say, no, you don't. That was just the pattern. And then I had kids. And I'd, and then I remember saying to him, I love you. He'd say, I love you more. And I'd say, yeah, you do. Because now that I've been a son and I've been a dad, it's completely different. It's a very different, it's a very different thing. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. Like just as powerful as him actually playing is him talking and talking about his father. Yeah. Beautiful. Very great. Oh, he's here. Welcome back. He looks just like SRK.