British guitarist John McLaughlin has had one of the most admired careers in music. Passing through the British blues scene that launched such guitar gods as Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Mick Taylor, to name a few, McLaughlin abandoned the blues-to-rock route and has since almost exclusively worked in jazz.
It is jazz where he began, most notably playing in the great second Miles Davis Quintet, beginning in 1969 with In A Silent Way and through 1989 playing on eleven Davis albums, but also playing with his Davis bandmate Tony Williams in Lifetime, his other Davis bandmate Wayne Shorter, along with the likes of Larry Coryell, before forming and leading the groundbreaking fusion group the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
He would still play with musicians from the rock and blues world (Jack Bruce, Duffy Power, Graham Bond, Carlos Santana, et. al.) on occasion, but the Mahavishnu Orchestra (along with his time with Davis) would be his launching pad to groundbreaking jazz icon status. The group would have two incarnations and after the first incarnation in 1976, he formed another group that fused styles: Shakti.
While George Harrison has rightly received hefty praise for being one of the first Western pop musicians to explore Indian music, McLaughlin’s extensive catalog and tours with the various incarnations of Shakti may be the most fully realized collaboration between a Western musician and Indian musicians. The group’s place in Indian music is secure, but with McLaughlin as a key member of the ensamble, they must also be considered a world music group and in many respects, pioneers of that elastic genre.
The group consisted of L. Shankar on violin, Ramnad Raghavan on mridangam, T. H. Vinayakram on Ghatam and mridangam, and Zakir Hussain on tabla on their debut album Shakti with John McLaughlin, released in 1976, of a concert recorded at Southampton College in 1975.
The group recorded two more albums without Raghavan and then reformed in 1999 as Remember Shakti, with Mclaughlin and Hussain returning and the lineup changing until their final tour in 2024. Hussain died in December of 1974 and this new live album is a heartfelt and moving tribute to the late Indian master musician and a 50th anniversary of the forming of the group. The lineup here features McLaughlin, Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Ganesh Rajagopalan, and Selvaganesh Vinayakram.
The double-album vinyl version features six songs over the two discs. McLaughlin’s bluesy guitar sets the mood on his composition “Kiki,” the opening track, which then becomes bracing Indian music at its best. On the second track, “Giriraj Sudha,” McLaughlin starts things off again on guitar but with a jazzier feel before the track becomes filled with sweet singing, soaring violin and syncopated rhythms.
Simple and mournful, “Lotus Feet,” another McLaughlin composition, doesn’t so much fuse Western and Eastern music as bring together the ancient and modern, with McLaughlin’s synth guitar providing an electronic buzz. “5 in the Morning, 6 in the Afternoon” is the most overtly jazzy track on the album and builds to a hot jam. Taking the tempo way down is the heartfelt and moving “Sakhi.” The album closes with the epic “Shrini’s Dream,” which shows fusion music can have memorable hooks.
The double-gatefold set is a beautiful package that features liner notes and custom sleeves, with the vinyl albums perfectly mastered and boasting impeccable sound. While the album is a tribute to a key member of Shakti, it’s not a sad affair, mourning a death, but instead is a joyful celebration of a life well lived. And, in a time of wars and deep divisions and filled with those who want to divide people because of their ethnic, religious, or social background, the music here is an uplifting and positive musical hymn of hope that unites, rather than divides.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
