Shakti: Still jamming with joy, still making history

The legendary band’s 2024 Grammy win for Best Global Music Album proves the power and popularity of its own unique brand of fusion music.

Vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, Ustad Zakir Hussain, and percussionist V. Selvaganesh of Shakti pose with the trophy for the Best Global Music Album at the 66th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, US, on February 4, 2024. | Photo Credit: PTI

The year was 1976: the legendary music producer Clive Davis was in a quandary. John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain had handed him a master tape of a new album called Shakti with John McLaughlin, with McLaughlin on guitar, Hussain on tabla, L. Shankar on violin, and T.H. “Vikku” Vinayakram on ghatam. Davis could not think of a musical category to slot the album in. He had not heard anything like this before: spontaneous improvisational compositions based on diverse musical traditions, including south Indian Carnatic music, north Indian Hindustani classical, Western jazz, and blues. McLaughlin and Hussain were not helping him either: “Call it whatever you want to. For us, it is just music,” McLaughlin apparently told Davis.

Shakti with John McLaughlin was the first album of the fusion band Shakti, which comprised Shankar, Hussain, Vinayakram, and McLaughlin. The band’s path-breaking music added a new dimension to the nascent concept of world music and had audiences all over the world asking for more. It started a trend that has not abated; this was proved all over again when the 2024 Grammy for the Best Global Music Album went to Shakti’s latest, This Moment, released in 2023. In between, Shakti had disbanded and formed again. This Moment features V. Selvaganesh (ghatam), G. Rajagopalan (violin), and Shankar Mahadevan (vocals), alongside Hussain and McLaughlin.

Coming 46 years after their last album, Natural Elements (1977), This Moment still has the characteristic appeal of Shakti’s music even without the genius of two of the original members, Shankar and Vinayakram. “The single characteristic of Shakti,” McLaughlin once said, “is the joy of playing and the joy of being together.” The music makes a statement for peace, collaboration, and cultural harmony in a world intent on building borders.

The beginnings

The origin of Shakti is a legend in itself. In 1972, a dinner in the California flat of the sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan was followed by an impromptu jam session, with Hussain on tabla and McLaughlin on acoustic guitar. “From the first second it was total communication,” McLaughlin remembered 51 years later in an interview with Paul Reed Smith, the luthier who makes his PRS guitars. At this time, McLaughlin was learning to play the veena and met a kindred spirit in the young violin maestro L. Shankar. Shankar later recalled his first jam session with McLaughin as the most liberating experience of his life, with McLaughlin’s genius at adapting to different styles allowing Shankar to play what he wanted to, in the way he wanted to. With Vinayakram joining soon after, a new supergroup was formed comprising the brightest stars of Indian classical music and Western jazz.

John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Ganesh Rajagopalan, and Selvaganesh Vinayakram perform at Shakti’s 50th anniversary India tour in Bengaluru on January 20, 2023. | Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

In 1973, McLaughlin was already a superstar in the jazz scene, collaborating with Miles Davis for albums like In a Silent Way (1969), Bitches Brew (1969), and A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971). But he turned down a permanent spot in Miles’ group to pursue his own musical destiny. The Mahavishnu Orchestra that he formed in 1971 at the insistence of Davis was a tribute to his fascination with Indian music and spirituality. It sought to break musical boundaries in its search for freedom and new forms of expression.

The experimentation continued with Shakti, which set no limits on music, drawing freely from the ancient wells of diverse cultures to seamlessly synthesise them with contemporary expressions. To get the subtle microtones that are integral to Indian classical music, McLaughlin redesigned his guitar fretboard, attaching seven extra “sympathetic strings” (an idea he got from the veena) to get the accompanying drone. The iconic 13-string “Shakti” guitar was to remain his main axe for much of the 1970s.

Highlights

• The 2024 Grammy for the Best Global Music Album went to fusion band Shakti’s latest, This Moment, released in 2023. Shakti was formed in 1973: the band’s path-breaking music added a new dimension to the nascent concept of world music
• Shakti set no limits on music, drawing freely from the ancient wells of diverse cultures to seamlessly synthesise them with contemporary expressions
• The spirit of Shakti is evident in each strain of This Moment under the direction of legendary guitarist John McLaughlin and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, the album embodies the same musical ideals and cultural values that Shakti stood for when it was formed 51 years ago 

Heady brew

Initially, record companies and concert promoters were unsure about how the audience would take to this new kind of music. “Record companies and promoters are not too crazy about the idea. They think it’s too esoteric. But that’s their problem.... They don’t have my needs and desires to develop music, and the only way I know how to do this is to follow my own intuitions,” McLaughlin said in an interview in the 1970s. But the audience loved Shakti. With McLaughlin and Shankar merging musical universes with their strings, and Hussain and Vikku “running amok on the taal road”, Shakti offered the audience a heady brew.

The original Shakti quartet. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

“There we were—four musicians from varied backgrounds sitting on a stage platform in Indian style and, with complete conviction, playing music that was never heard before; it was a totally positive offering. The energy of four as one was strong. We were confident that our musical statement would become valid and accepted as a road to traverse and that it would eventually lead to what is now known as world music,” Hussain said in an interview.

The inner eye

For the music aficionado, the album cover is as important as the record itself. The cover of This Moment is created by Togetherly, a creative communications company based in India. It is remarkable not only for its hypnotic beauty, but also for the way it reflects the philosophy of Shakti.

Like the music, the album design too was a collaborative effort, with the team of three—Orko Basu, Urmi Bhanja, and Mrinalini Sen—working from different parts of India (Bhanja in Kolkata, Basu in Bangaluru, and Sen in Goa). Basu, the founder of Togetherly, had collaborated with McLaughlin in 2014. When McLaughlin saw the album cover Basu was working on for another artist, he wanted it for This Moment. “Though the design was different, it had the big moon, the patterned sky, and the natural elements. When McLaughlin wanted it for the Shakti album cover, I got some more artists on board and they elevated it to a whole new level.... For me, Natural Elements is a seminal album which opened my mind. Designing the cover for Shakti’s first studio album after Natural Elements was daunting,” Basu told Frontline.

Bhanja said, “We wanted to capture what Shakti as a band stands for, and give it a distinctive illustration—this Mrinalini achieved with her unique style of drawing. The mandala is a pretty common motif in rock poster art. The eyes signify the opening of the inner eye and awareness. The lotus is a common theme in Shakti’s music. So, we got a lotus pond in the foreground and infused it with life. The fish, the frog, the bird, and the dragonfly symbolise cosmic harmony. The bridge represents the way Shakti brings together different cultures and music. The gold in the colour scheme suggests the 50th year of Shakti’s formation. We gave the band a choice between blue and purple for the main colour, and they chose purple.”

In her illustration, Sen wanted to convey not just a landscape, but something else beyond it. “We looked at Islamic architecture, mosaic designs, thangka art, psychedelic paintings, etc. For the moon, I initially tried the mosaic style, which did not work. So, we settled for an embroidered effect,” said Mrinalini. It took her two months just to draw the eyes in the sky. “I went crazy [laughs]. I was sleeping and dreaming eyes; then waking up and drawing them. We had to make sure that there was a pattern in the infinite number of eyes in the sky: the peacock feather design created that pattern,” she explained.

In the mid-1970s, Shakti was one of the biggest acts in music, performing continuously, sharing stage with jazz stars like Herbie Hancock, Billy Cobham, Weather Report, as well as with rock legends like Carlos Santana. “We are, in a way, conductors of cosmic emotion,” Hussain famously said, adding: “There is no Shankar, there is no John, there is no me—just a flow of energy.”

What facilitated this seamless blending was the band members’ mastery over their respective instruments. Besides, as Hussain put it, they were “young enough to allow for ‘musical sacrilege’” and ignore the restrictions imposed on them by their respective gharanas “in the interest of finding a road towards oneness”. The song “Get Down and Sruti” from Natural Elements (1977) is a perfect example of the amalgamation of diverse styles and influences that Shakti brought to the table. Here the riffs and ragas flow into one another, swaying to the rhythms of Vikku’s ghatam and Hussain’s tabla. The same alchemy is evident in the eight tracks of This Moment.

Identical vision

Interestingly, for a band whose USP is playing and improvising together, This Moment was recorded and mixed in isolation during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2021. The four musicians performed in four geographical locations. “This Moment is the result of me calling everyone in the fall of 2021 and persuading them to use today’s recording technology to realise it,” said McLaughlin.

The cover of This Moment | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

The intricate melodies riding on shifting rhythms of the tabla, the ghatam, and the hand claps and the interplay of the guitar, the violin, and the vocals—all amalgamated by the individual geniuses of the four masters make it difficult to imagine that the music was not recorded together. It is as if, living in different parts of the world, they had an identical vision that they shared with one another. The subsequent live performances across the world from 2023 onwards further proved that the album was the result of kindred spirits coming together rather than fancy recording technology.

Shankar Mahadevan, Zakir Hussain, mandolin vidwan U. Shrinivas, John McLaughlin and Kanjira wizard V. Selvaganesh at the Gateway of India in Mumbai on January 20, 2005. Shakti performed in Mumbai on January 22, 2005, as the part of the Mumbai Festival. | Photo Credit: PAUL NORONHA

Of course, the genius of L. Shankar is missing and the vocal aspect might be deemed excessive. But the spirit of Shakti is evident in each strain of This Moment: under the direction McLaughlin and Hussain, the album embodies the same musical ideals and cultural values that Shakti stood for when it was formed 51 years ago. As Vinayakram observed on hearing about the regrouping of Shakti with new members: “Shakti is not a band. It is an emotion.”