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.
6 comments:
yeah right...
nothing short of musical marvel!..
and its easy to see @places john finding off in his timing and smirks innocently, on not being able to keep up with mandolin.. so its not in 'perfect' unison and mandolin U Srinivas is so very underrated.. even a maestro like John cant keep up with him.
BTW i was proud and assumed i introduced u to shakthi.. alas.. i had it in my mac all the while.. and i remember showing it to u.. AR Monkology, the music expert that he is deserves the mention though!
A special mention to the way the content is presented to the readers. That's a very neat blog. No over exaggerated or animated discussion. Light to read. The content is not heavy. Good one.
Shakthi is star studded but its not on top of my list. Apart from Giri Rajasudha, I haven't heard the other songs intently. Maybe I should listen more to like it better.
@germinal dreamer : Very true, the first video of Shakti was introduced to me by you and I'm very grateful for that( just didn't mention it here :)) but AR was the one who spoke about the band, the background and gave me some great tracks of Shakti which made me stick to the band and listen even though i didn't like it the first time.
@umashankar : I remember from the last time, when you told me to be more careful about the way i write my blogs( and to proof read them). I gave it an honest attempt and looks like its paid off. Thanks.
You should definitely listen to more tracks of Shakti. Each one
of them is uniquely fabulous as far as i have heard.
Not really my genre....but I do appreciate your enthusiasm. I will definitely check it out! :-)
worstest spelling possible for zakir hussain. anyways thanks for the mention...
@arun
Im sorry.. my bad.. but everybody got the point.!!! :)
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