Anyone ever heard of Bill Laswell? He is a sick nasty bassist who also does some really chill side projects. His most chill stuff is his dub remixes. Check out pandora.com and type in bill laswell, you will get all of his crazy shit to his really ambient chill shit too. I highly recommend his stuff for a chill party or even just sitting around meditating. Check it out.
Zakir is absolutely AMAZING. I saw him play once with a dance company and another time with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland. That show was so great, the cd Charles Lloyd/Zakir Hussain/Eric Harland released "Sangam" is also great.
My roommate bought some tablas and had them around for a while, but then I think he ended up selling them because they were so hard to tune. We would play on them for a while but it sounded nothing like the ones in Tabla beat science.