{"id":30230,"date":"2025-12-08T05:30:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30230"},"modified":"2025-12-09T09:58:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:58:27","slug":"john-mclaughlin-the-shakti-sage-part-one-of-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/08\/john-mclaughlin-the-shakti-sage-part-one-of-two\/","title":{"rendered":"John McLaughlin: The Shakti Sage (Part One of Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an edited and expanded version of a feature that was originally published in <\/span>The Tonearm<\/b><\/i><\/span>.<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n

Busy and vital as ever at age 83, John McLaughlin is currently overseeing two new album releases. Montreux Jazz Festival 2022<\/i> is a 2CD+Blu-Ray document of the virtuoso guitarist with his longtime band, the 4th<\/sup> Dimension. On thrilling, fiery tracks like \u201cKiki,\u201d the quintet \u2013 McLaughlin plus \u00c9tienne M\u2019Bapp\u00e9 on bass, keyboardist\/drummer extraordinaire Gary Husband, pianist Jany McPherson and drummer Nicolas Viccaro \u2013 wipes away any perceived lines between blues, jazz and fusion. The set features twelve tunes, ten of which are McLaughlin originals. Also featured is a transcendent reading of Pharoah Sanders\u2019 sublime \u201cThe Creator Has a Master Plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaughlin seems to have a master plan all his own as well. In the early \u201870s, and alongside two other major endeavors \u2013 a thriving solo career and leading the groundbreaking Mahavishnu Orchestra \u2013 he launched Shakti, one of the first-ever \u201cworld fusion\u201d groups. Seamlessly combining Eastern and Western musical sensibilities, the ensemble featured McLaughlin alongside some of India\u2019s most revered traditional musicians. Their sonic synthesis yielded several acclaimed tours and three albums released during that decade.<\/p>\n

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Inevitably \u2013 owing to the busy schedules of the involved parties \u2013 Shakti was an intermittent project. After a lengthy hiatus, McLaughlin and Shakti mainstay Zakir Hussain reactivated the group in 2023, earning a Grammy Award for This Moment<\/i>. Hussain died in December 2024; shortly thereafter McLaughlin announced that Shakti was done. But Mind Explosion<\/i>, a recording drawn from the group\u2019s triumphant 50th<\/sup> anniversary tour, serves as an exclamation point at the end of the Shakti saga. It\u2019s also meant as a tribute to Hussain, Zakir McLaughlin\u2019s longtime partner in that musical endeavor.<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s a willing, lively and engaging interviewee, John McLaughlin has taken part in comparatively few interviews focusing on Shakti. So the opportunity to speak with him about that group was a treat indeed.<\/p>\n

What was your first exposure to Indian music?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, my; we\u2019re going to go back to the \u201860s!? Probably it was one of the Beatles tunes where George Harrison was playing sitar<\/i>. But then around 1967, I heard a South Indian veena<\/i> player called S. Balachander; he just blew my mind. And this also coincided with the psychedelic period; we were all tripping\u2026 legally<\/i>, of course. And it coincided with my desire to discover something about the meaning of life, as they say.<\/p>\n

But from that point, hearing Balachander and the South Indian school which he was part of, was more than fascinating. It just grew. I moved to the U.S. at the beginning of \u201869, and by the time I got to New York, I had already started to look for a teacher to teach me Indian theory. Either North or South; I didn\u2019t care. And it was that summer where I got to meet Zakir Hussain for the first time. And the rest is history, really.<\/p>\n

What was the inspiration to launch Shakti?<\/b><\/p>\n

Because they were amazing players. The Indian musical system, whether North or South, is linear; they don\u2019t have harmony, but they have amongst their musicians some of the most unbelievable improvisers. And that\u2019s the key word, because other than jazz, they\u2019re the only other school that improvises rhythmically.<\/p>\n

And that coincided with a very curious phenomenon in 1958 when Miles [Davis] came out with the new modal system of playing. When I heard that for the first time was on Milestones<\/i>; that came out in \u201858. I would have been 16, and I knew that this school was for me. The great thing about the modal school is that it\u2019s also linear. Coltrane made his own version of that with Impressions<\/i>. He took the structure right out of Miles\u2019 book.<\/p>\n

We in the west, we use harmony. But what changed for me was that I saw everything \u2013 even harmony \u2013 in linear terms, and that was a big<\/i> change for me. Instead of seeing it vertically like a chord, I just saw a chord like the same notes of a scale, or whatever mode played simultaneously. So that loosened everything up for me.<\/p>\n

But the thing is, the Indian players are not only master improvisers, they\u2019re master improvisers in very odd time signatures<\/i>, which has been my personal fetish since I was very young. And this continues to this day; I can\u2019t help it. Especially if I\u2019m using a harmonic structure, [I enjoy] the challenge of playing in, say, 5 or 15 or 11 or whatever, with not just a rhythm \u2013 that rhythmical restraint \u2013 but the harmonic restraints.<\/p>\n

It goes back to this quote of Stravinsky I read. He said [paraphrased], \u201cThe more restraints I put on myself, the freer I become.\u201d I think this is where discipline comes in. Because in the end, I\u2019m a firm believer that perfect discipline will lead to perfect freedom; that\u2019s the way I see it.<\/p>\n

You talk about the linear nature, the commonality between the two forms, jazz and Indian music. When you put Shakti together, did you find that you had to make any concessions to either approach to make them work together?<\/b><\/p>\n

No; it fell right into place. Because at that time \u2013 and it\u2019s continued to this day in the evolution of Indian music \u2013 Indian musicians were as fascinated about Western music as I was about their music. Especially people like Zakir Hussain or L. Shankar, the violinist whom I met at Wesleyan University where I was studying veena<\/i> with Dr. Ramanathan.<\/p>\n

Part of my goal as a Western musician was to be able to move to a certain degree harmonically. I was playing notes that were not in that specific raga they were playing, but they were the right<\/i> notes whereby I could enhance a solo by bringing in another kind of color behind their solo. The Indian musicians really liked that, where I would [add] another color. Even though they were playing the same raga, it sounded differently because of the fundamental.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an edited and expanded version of a feature that was originally published in The Tonearm. Busy and vital as ever at age 83, John McLaughlin is currently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,76],"tags":[1187,5787],"class_list":["post-30230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","category-interview","category-world","tag-john-mclaughlin","tag-shakti","cat-32-id","cat-41-id","cat-76-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30529,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30230\/revisions\/30529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}