Shakti

来自美国的John McLaughlin被一致公认为是摇摆爵士运动中最佳的吉他手，是一位将Fusion乐发扬光大的音乐者。在Miles Davis的乐队中，John McLaughlin将吉他的失真音色带入到了爵士乐领域。他对印度传统音乐有着很深的研究，擅长在不寻常的调式中使用和弦音阶，再加上丰富想象，John McLaughlin使得fusion音乐在当时深受LSD影响的文化中也占有了重要的位置。1975年，McLaughlin和印度tabla演奏大师Zakir Hussain（他的父亲是Ustad Allah Rakha，更是tabla演奏的传奇人物）组建了一只以印度音乐为核心的乐队-Shakti，开始弹奏原声吉他，他在音乐风格上的这种出人意料的迅速转变让音乐界感到惊讶。Zakir Hussain被认为是使印度打击乐发生革命性变化的始作俑者,完美的tabla鼓手,世界音乐界的偶像级人物…作为一位传统的tabla演奏家,他的天才和令人激动的表演不但使他赢得得印度国宝的称号,更使他获得了国际声誉。

by Steve Huey
As jazz-rock fusion pioneer John McLaughlin delved deeper into Eastern spirituality and mysticism, he developed a corresponding interest in the music of South India. Following the collapse of the second version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1975, McLaughlin put together Shakti, an outfit dedicated to fusing high-energy jazz and Indian music. In addition to McLaughlin (who played acoustic guitar instead of his customary electric), Shakti featured violinist Lakshminarayana Shankar, tabla player Zakir Hussain, and mridangam players T.H. "Vikku" Vinayakram and Ramnad V. Raghavan. The group's innovative self-titled debut was released in the summer of 1975, after which Raghavan departed, leaving them a quartet. Two further Shakti albums -- 1976's A Handful of Beauty and 1977's Natural Elements -- appeared before McLaughlin elected to move on to other projects. In 1999, McLaughlin reunited with Hussain and Vinayakram for a new double-disc album, Remember Shakti, which also featured bansuri master Hariprasad Chaurasia.