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.