I have been wanting to write about the band who I grew up listening to for quite sometime now. Infact, I have been wanting to write more about music and stuff like that, but I have just been darned lazy!
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Shakti, a band who were as daring with their experimental music as they were just amazing with it. To say that their music was sheer genius would be an understatement. My father had a small music collection which is varied - ranging from Michael Jackson to Nazia Hassan to KJ Yesudas to L Subramaniam(LSu) and L Shankar's Shakti. He had a SONY casette player which he was proud of and would blare out KJY's thodi and other semi-classicals or LSu's Live in Moscow or Shakti's Natural Elements when he would go on a cleaning spree of the house (he was in this 'spree' almost every other day!
I started learning the violin in the summer of 1990 or rather was forced to go for classes as my parents thought it a good hobby for me and Lsu and LShankar's music being the only violin music that we had at home I was drawn to their style of playing early on. Infact during my high school days I would get the player over to my study table and listen to them while I studied. I adored both their music but I always thought LSu's music was more soulful while L Shankar's was peppy and energetic.
Shakti was formed sometime in the early 1970s as a collaboration between L Shankar and John Mclaughlin, who was already popular then as the founder/lead guitarist of a band called Mahavishnu Orchestra, which itself was an experimental band making a new genre of Jazz-Rock fusion music. It was during this time that Mclaughlin met L Shankar at Wesleyan university, the former who was studying the Veena there privately and the latter who was doing his Phd on ethnomusicology. The early lineup of the band included Ustad Zakir Hussain on the Tabla, Ramnad Raghavan on the Mrudangam and TH Vinayakram on the Ghatam and Mrudangam. Ramnad left the band soon, and the rest of the band came out with two albums as a quartet - Natural Elements and A Handful of Beauty.
My favourite album was the a recording of their live concert at South Hampton College, New York, along with Ramnad Raghavan. You can feel the energy in their playing while you listen to 'Lotus feet' or What 'Need Have I...' especially the latter of the two - a brilliant piece in chala nattai if I remember correct, with some peppy improvisations on both the guitar and the violin. The other two were studio recordings and L Shankar has shown in these recordings that he knows how to handle a violin. The man plays with such an amazing dexterity and with a speed that never ceases to amaze me!
And Mclaughlin is no less awesome, his fingers race through the fretboard. He had guitar specially made for playing music that could match the Indian type music - a guitar with fretboard chisseled out to give more foreedom to bend the strings and a set of sympathetic strings stretched diagonally across the sound hole, that he used to give the 'indian' effect to his music. And with two brilliant percussonists, the band defined what fusion music was all about. Shankar's and Mclaughlin's understanding of the other's music that showed in their compositions and their style of playing during the concerts produced a sound that defined the true east-west crossover, the sound of jazz-indian classical, acoustic fusion. Infact, it was more than just east-west fusion of music, it was also a hindustani- carnatic classical fusion with Zakir's tabla complementing Vikku's ghatam!!!
Unfortunately, the band disbanded in the mid, late 70s. There was a reincarnation in the form of Remember Shakti with a differing lineup with Zakir and Mclaughling being constant in the band. Though I have heard their later music, I am and will remain a fan of the early Shankar-Mclaughlin sound.
An article on the band's music, interviews with Mclaughlin and Zakir Hussain.
