A Random Ramble

During my orientation days at Wipro Technologies in the fall of 2005, the bunch of newcomers which included yours truly was asked to put on paper, artistically of course, using contraptions to aid the venture, sketches which had a message we wanted to share with the world. Of course, the stipulation forced us all to come up with a rationale behind the horrendous figures we drew! Not all the drawings were horrendous, but mine most certainly was. For some strange reason, I had come up with a mask with two faces, supposed to show the two personalities that we become as part of leading both of our professional and social/family lives or whatever. And I rambled on about my 'artistic' creation for a couple of minutes before finishing it with a thought that we tend to get busy with our work/professional life so much, thinking about careers and stuff that we forget to take a moment and enjoy the life that we lead, life that goes on around us and that which we are a part of! You would think that I would have got a standing ovation for putting forth to the world, a philosophy that has the right ingredients of being a reality check on your life. But if you thought that, you thought wrong 'cos unfortunately all I got was a one minute silence, appreciating and reflecting upon my thought/philosophy. These orientations are a bore, I tell you! Bleah...

I have rambled on I see, but hey... that is exactly the intent of this post. Dear reader, please don't curse me! :(


It's been five months since I set foot on the American soil to purse my dreams of adding a masters degree as a suffix to my name. A semester is about to get over and it's been a rather uneventful one. Yeah, yeah, yeah...I am not complaining, but it's just that even when your life is an uneventful or a busy-less one, you tend to fall into a rut of laziness. At least I tend to! And in such times, music has been always a saviour, in more ways than one. Ever since I got my 'Neo' after standing in the cold for 6 hours the night before Black Friday sales, I have been on a 'music' hunt on youtube. Youtube is a great place to search for good music, and I always make it a point to put up good videos in my Orkut collection. But I had always felt the lack of an iPod/mp3 player in my life, but all in good time.

There was a startling thing I noticed about the American society - be it the education system or at the work place, the only things I can comment on right now due to my restricted involvement, thanks to my student-alien status. You get recognition for the work that you do, no matter what race/religion/country you are from. You are rewarded for the work you do. At the same time, you get the stick if you shirk. These guys don't give prominence to 'Equal Opportunity to All' for nothing. I call that observation startling 'cos that is what it is to me, coming from a society where importance is given to your religion, your language, your caste and riots break out in a fight for who wants to be called the most backward!!! India has a lot of potential to become a world power, potential in the form of cultural diversities and traditions, potential that ironically though is our major deterrent to development. India in a way is full of racists.

Like I said, the first semester has not been so hectic. As I look forward to the coming holidays, I can't help being amazed at how fast time has flown by. It seems like yesterday when I got my admit letter from NCSU. The trip home for Christmas, a special trip to Chennai to meet close friends after a long time, the trip to Wayanad on New Year's with the Magas. The first half of 2007 was not a pleasant one apart from the fact I got here. But to call the second half of this year, the most amazing time of my life, would be an understatement. I shall try to do justice to my reminiscences in a separate post, which I hope to post before the year is up. A post that is long due.

Signing off...

PS: I have tried my best to get this post to be a true ramble - true to the title, readers may infact rate the sanity (or insanity) of this post in terms of its 'ramblingy' (Is that even a word?! What the hell do I out in here?!) nature. In other words - post a fucking comment, dumb ass! :|

PPS: The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony - A must listen!

To my new found motivation for blogging, maybe even a potential muse... :)

Over and Out.

Shakti - The definition of fusion music

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.