Shakti

Thanks to my friend ' AR' who introduced me to this fabulous, out of the world band called Shakti. Its a band which was formed in 1975 and headed by John McLaughlin and boasts of legends like Zakhir Husein, L Shankar, vikku vinayakaram, Mandolin Srinivas etc.
I had previously listened to their work individually( except for vikku), but listening to all these guys play together on one stage is nothing short of a musical marvel.

Shakti's music is more of a journey than a song. It has these small notes of 2 or 3 seconds at frequent irregular intervals which inject mental pleasure.
You mite not appreciate shakti's unique blend of acoustic/carnatic/jazz music the first time you listen to it. Honestly,i didn't. It takes a while before you get into the groove of this kind of music, but once you do there is no turning back on it.



The video above is from the early days of Shakti. Its interesting how L Shankar( voilin) progressively dominates the stage.


The video below is a more recent video of Shakti with Shankar Mahadevan on the vocals of Giriras Sudha. An elegant remake of the original Tyagaraja composition.
I wonder how each of them remember their notes and play in unison.In addition to that, they do a lot of impromptu improvisation, but still their timing on the fusion is immaculate.
This video is a great starter to dig into the works of Mandolin Srinivas of whom i am a big fan.



Lemme know if you'd like to hear more about any of these artists.

Goldman Sachs

Something that i found really interesting from a news site.Thought you guys should take a look at it :

# Goldman Sachs traders made infinite profits - twice.

# Goldman Sachs doesn’t wear a watch, THEY decide what time it is.

# Remember the Soviet Union? They decided to quit after shorting Goldman Sachs.

# If you have five dollars and Goldman Sachs has five dollars, Goldman Sachs has more money than you

# 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Goldman Sachs. Sounds like a fair fight.

# The only reason you're conscious right now is because Goldman Sachs doesn't want to carry you.

# Killing Goldman Sachs doesn't make it dead. It just makes it angry.

# There were originally five horsemen of the apocalypse. Goldman Sachs said it would travel by foot.

# Goldman Sachs sleeps with a gun under its pillow. But he could kill you with the pillow.

# Goldman Sachs can eat just one Lay's Potato Chip. Don't tell Goldman what it can't fucking do.