Dec 21 2006
Lovely Remember Shakti concert evening in Bangalore
On Dec 14, I braved about 90 minutes of insane Bangalore traffic to fend my way from Whitefield to Palace grounds for the Remember Shakti concert (thanks Hari for another good trip report).
This concert was quite special because I finally heard John Mclaughlin ‘live’. My first brush with McLaughlin’s music was in the heady summer of 2002 when I spent much of extended graduate school life in a musical haze. It was then that I first heard Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti and some of McLaughlin’s work with Paco de Lucia, Al De Meola, Trilok Gurtu, Carlos Santana. Some of my old friends including Leon from Minneapolis and Sabari from Mumbai have had run ins with John personally or through his music and it would be fair to say that in the ‘fusion world music’ or whatever other silly category McLaughlin’s jazz music is put within, his music has been an important reference point for me.
The concert had a mostly ambient and light feel, with moments of punctuated release by Selvaganesh and ‘Mandolin’ Srinivas and Shankar Mahadevan, and a few vigorous taals and riffs by Zakir and McLaughlin. I went away with a generally satisfied feeling, I suppose its unfair to expect personal epiphanies to arise even with such a stellar lineup.
I tried recording some of the music with my Nokia 6681 which was a BAD idea - the recording sucked when played later. : )
