In 2007, readers’ polls from both Modern Drummer and Drum! magazines named him Best World Music and Best Worldbeat Drummer respectively. On February 8, 2009, Zakir received a Grammy in the Best Contemporary World Music category for Global Drum Project, his group with Mickey Hart, Giovanni Hidalgo and Sikiru Adepoju. Also, in 2009, Zakir was named Officier in the Order of Arts and Letters by France’s Ministry of Culture and Communication for his extraordinary artistic and cultural contribution. On January 18, 2017, Zakir was presented with SFJazz’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his “unparalleled contribution to the world of music”. In 2022, he received the Aga Khan Music Award for Lifetime Achievement. In June, 2022, it was announced that Zakir is the 2022 Kyoto Prize laureate in Arts and Philosophy.

A child prodigy, Zakir was touring by the age of twelve. He came to the United States in 1970, performing his first USA concert at the Fillmore East in New York City with Pandit Ravi Shankar, embarking on an illustrious international career. A prolific composer and recording artist, Zakir has received widespread recognition for his many ensembles and collaborations. In 1987, his first solo release, Making Music, was acclaimed as “one of the most inspired East-West fusion albums ever recorded.” In 1992, Planet Drum, an album co-created and produced by Zakir and Mickey Hart, became the first recording to win a Grammy in the Best World Music category, the Downbeat Critics’ Poll for Best World Beat Album and the NARM Indie Best Seller Award for World Music Recording. Since 1996, in the USA and internationally, Zakir has been curating, conducting and touring with his ensemble, Masters of Percussion.

Zakir received the distinct honor of co-composing the opening music for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, 1996. He was commissioned to compose music for Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet (for which he received an Isadora Duncan Award), and to compose an original work for the San Francisco Jazz Festival, both in 1998. He has received numerous grants, including participation in the Meet the Composer programs funded by the Pew Memorial Trust. In 2000, Zakir worked again with choreographer Alonzo King, this time composing music for The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. In 2002, his commissioned work for choreographer Mark Morris’ “Kolam” premiered as part of YoYo Ma’s “Silk Road Project” with YoYo Ma and Zakir performing Zakir’s composition live for the performance. In September 2006, Triple Concerto for Banjo, Bass and Tabla, a piece co-composed by Zakir,

Edgar Meyer and Béla Fleck, was performed by them with the Nashville Symphony which comissioned the work for the gala opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Hall in Nashville. In January, 2009, it was recreated with the Detroit Symphony, again under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. This performance and new original works composed by Zakir, Edgar and Béla, was released as the Grammy-nominated The Melody of  Rhythm in 2009. Zakir’s second concerto, Ameen, Amen, Shanti – Concerto for Four Soloists, a special commission for the National Symphony Orchestra, premiered at Kennedy Center in March, 2011, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. His third concerto, the first-ever tabla concerto, was premiered in September, 2015, by the Symphony Orchestra of India, premiered in Europe in January, 2016, and premiered in the United States in April, 2017, by the National Symphony Orchestra at Kennedy Center.

Zakir reunited with Alonzo King in 2007, for Lines Ballet’s 25th anniversary celebration, creating acclaimed music for King’s Rasa, and was commissioned to score King’s Scheherazade which premiered in Monte Carlo in December 2009, garnering another Isadora Duncan Award. In 2007, the government of India chose Zakir to compose an anthem to celebrate India’s 60th year of independence. The song, “Jai Hind”, has been recorded by an array of India’s finest classical vocalists and pop singers.

Zakir has scored for many films, including Merchant-Ivory’s Heat and Dust (in which he also co-starred), In Custody and Mystic Masseur, Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, Vanaprastham (The Last Dance), Saaz, Everybody Says I’m Fine, Mr. And Mrs. Iyer and Manto.

Zakir is the recipient of the 1999 National Heritage Fellowship, the United States’ highest honor for a master in the traditional arts, presented by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the United States Senate on September 28, 1999. In 2005, he was named an Old Dominion Fellow by the Humanities Council at Princeton University, where he resided for the 2005-2006 autumn semester as full professor in the music department, teaching a survey course in Indian classical music and dance. In the spring of 2007, this course was taught again by Zakir, this time at Stanford University, and again at the University of Washington, Seattle, in the autumn of 2018. Zakir’s yearly tabla workshop in Marin County, conducted for the past thirty years, draws hundreds of serious students and performers. In the spring of 2015, he was in residence at UC Berkeley in the prestigious post of Regents Lecturer.  In 2019, he  was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Berklee College of Music in Boston, and from Indira Kala Sangeet University, Khairagarh. In 2022, Zakir received a third doctorate from the University of Mumbai, the first LLD awarded to an artist, and a fourth from the University of Gwalior.

In 1992, Zakir founded Moment! Records which features original collaborations in the field of contemporary world music and live concert performances by great masters of the classical music of both North and South India, as well as a Masters of Percussion series. Moment Records’ 2006 release, Golden Strings of the Sarode with Aashish Khan and Zakir Hussain, was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Traditional World Music category for that year. Moment Records’ 2014 DVD release, Zakir Hussain: The SF Jazz Sessions, featuring a host of Zakir’s worldclass collaborators, has been critically acclaimed.

Zakir has been voted “Best Percussionist” by Modern Drummer’s Reader’s Poll, by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2020, and by the Downbeat Critics’ Poll in 2020 and 2021.