There was a chorus of excitement when we got the news. Shakti, a fusion band comprising artistes Shankar Mahadevan, Zakir Hussain, Ganesh Rajagopalan, V. Selvaganesh and John McLaughlin, won the Grammy Award for the Best Global Music Album for their latest album This Moment.
The ceremony held at Los Angeles on February 4 also saw Hussain bag the Grammy under the Best Global Music Performance with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer featuring virtuoso flautist, Rakesh Chaurasia for Pashto.
The tabla maestro also won under the Best Contemporary Instrumental Album category alongside Chaurasia, Fleck and Meyer for As We Speak and created history by becoming the first Indian artiste to bag three Grammys in one night. This is a great inspiration for all Indian musicians today for international recognition. The albums have music of our soil and will create opportunities for Indian performers to participate and present our music globally.
What keeps Zakirji magical even today when he comes to Kolkata is his humility and warm smile. Pashto, as the name suggests, is an Afghan dialect/language and is mostly sung in the seven-beat rhythm, a rhythm which all of India knows through actor Pran’s dance in Yaari Hain Iman Mera in the blockbuster Zanjeer. But when you go through the Grammy-winning quartet’s Pashto, it walks you through the red clay-laden walkways of our Santiniketan. How amazingly Fleck has tuned up his guitars like the dotara/ektara.
The pentatonic melodies and the heptatonic rhythm of the quartet are a package of the simplicity of folk with sophisticated patterns hidden deep for music researchers. The upright bass finds great harmonies with Rakeshji’s flute and reminds one of Satyajit Ray and Ravi Shankar’s Pather Panchali soundscape.
We had the opportunity to work with Vikkuji, Shankarji, and Rakeshji in our album Jaya Hey 2.0 released last year, which celebrated 75 years of Indian Independence, and we attended all the Shakti concerts in Kolkata.
What stunned us all the time, was how they have maintained themselves to be the most relevant fusion artistes of our times. What changed in This Moment by Shakti, which we bought online as an LP, is that the team is now more serene, poised and adaptable to the taste of today’s audience. They are humbler with wisdom. The gadgets of guitar guru McLaughlin are simpler for the young audience.