Hand John Ji a Padma award, no?

Do you have a concert moment that you might take to the pyre Okay let me go first Decidedly for me itrsquos the moments with Shakti at New York Cityrsquos Central Park circa 2000 Itrsquos an openair concert of courseHorn of a car on the street outside the park goes off The band Shakti is in a state of trance As is the audience The continuously droning honk interferes with the music Almost in sync the band starts jamming to the honking sound as if this was plannedLittle later a butterfly wanders on to the stage Zakir Hussain on the tabla starts to tease the fluttering butterfly with his drum You watch the butterfly dance to his beats swiftly hovering up down sideways to the tablarsquos tempo The crowd roars alongsideWho else was there on stage Vikku Vinayakram god of ghatam clay pot for sure U Srinivas whose first name was his instrument mandolin V Selvaganesh on the kanjira and above all the Britborn American John Mclaughlin the leader of the band he put together with violinist L Shankar in the early 1970s Shankar subsequently quitShakti picked up the longest overdue Grammy in 2024 for This Moment their first album in 46 years McLaughlin couldnrsquot make it for the event The group as it stands now suitably thanked ldquoJohn Jirdquo which is fine desi endearment for a respectful suffixAlthough if you wish to own him entirely as an Indian the better replacement for John Ji is Mahavishnu which is the spiritual name he adopted once under the spell of his guru Sri Chinmoy 19312007 He founded the Mahavishnu Orchestra which contrary to its name was predominantly a rock band John Ji proteacutegeacute of Miles Davis is a man of jazzItrsquos impossible to fathom how hard he mustrsquove worked to penetrate the toughclosed Indian music scene introducing both the Carnatic and Hindustani classical to each other fusing the two silos into a guitar he invented with two sets of strings for the purpose of ShaktiThe beauty of Shakti unlike a lot of westernIndian fusion is that the terms of engagement are totally desisubcontinentalmdashmaking Indian classical music accessible to regular Joes like me Not to suggest thatrsquos essential for best resultsThe direction of influence was in the reverse when say Pakistani Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan collaborated with the Canadian Michael BrookTheir Night Song 1996 to my mind is the worldrsquos greatest album ever period let alone fusion Thatrsquos how many of us first got to know Nusrat mixing qawwali to ambient music belting in a recording studioIt wouldrsquove been difficult for Nusrat to perform Night Song on stage Whereas Shakti is all about experiencing live Irsquove heard This Moment on loop over the weekend it does nothing to me There isnrsquot a composition that stays Itrsquos obviously not in the mukhraantaramelody spaceFar too visceral for that You can instantly tell Shankar Mahadevan vocals Ganesh Rajagopalan violin along with Selvaganesh kanjira and the OG John Ji and Zakir playing off each otherrsquos energies could border on ecstasy on stage regardlessPretty much everyone associated with Shakti have been rightly honoured by the Indian government with the top civilian Padma Awards Noticeably not John Ji Oh why Never in the history of the American Grammys have so many Indians dominated the awards as 2024mdashZakir picked up threeAnd I donrsquot know any nonIndian whorsquos done as much for its music beyond flirting with the orient as an occult that was such a fad in the 1960sSurely John Ji mustrsquove been criticised by Jazz purists in his early years for creating an eclectic messmdashin the same way that Zakir was for long considered by Hindustani classical musicrsquos gatekeepers as a sellout to the WestAs John Ji puts it in the documentary The Story of Shakti 1977 on YouTube ldquoI just had a dream once of a piece of architecture with four shiny pillars making a perfect edifice and I could see me child prodigy Zakir Shankar reading music at Wesleyan University and Vikku that John Ji brought down to the USrdquoI donrsquot know if these four men talked to each other in that dream Nothing still beats these musicians playfully conversing with their instruments over a jugalbandimdashmimicking human voices art at its peakmdashwhich is so integral to free jazz as wellShakti have been off and on as a quartet over five decades They disbanded again after lsquoMandolinrsquo Srinivas passed away in 2014 from a liver ailment in his 40s The first time I reported a music event was also Shakti circa 2004 at Rang Bhavan Mumbairsquos Mecca for musicAs usual each member in the group got their own few minutes of showing off their instrumental chops for the finale Zakir entered last going for brokeAt some point it seemed his hands had left his body externally motorised to tame the tabla into absolute submission We were gasping for breath throughoutmdashno idea what had hit usThe piece read ldquoIf the VT station nearby was a vibration it would be thisrdquo Rang Bhavan is no more Shakti is around because Zakir and John Ji are More power to bothMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper