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This year's San Francisco Jazz Festival closed on an especially high note with ”Remember Shakti”, a tribute to the magically blend of South Asian Indian music with Western jazz. This phenomenal performance featured the legendary John McLaughlin on guitar, Zakir Hussain on tablas, V. Slevaganesh on Indian percussion and Shrini Vas on the 5-string electric mandolin. These four musical wizards captured the audience in the architecturally mind boggling Paramount Theater in Oakland with six 20 minute segments of pure musical excellence, comedy and magic. The men were seated on the floor of the stage around a large tapestry and manifest most of their energies through their upper body.
The two percussionists played with intensity and stamina as they dove into various solos and collaborations, revealing the many layers of rhythms and beats the various types of Indian instruments can produce. Hussain, a master of the tablas and Slevaganesh (son of the original Shakti Percussionist Vinayakram) on the Kanira and Ghatam – clay pot and drums not only blessed us with various instrumental jams, but also broke it down with vocal jams and with their hands slapping their cheeks to different rhythms. Musically talented and humorous, these two masters of their domain humbly laid down the beats throughout the course of the evening. I sat in disbelief that both of these men, with only 2 HANDS could produce such complex sounds that radiated through the Paramount.
A child prodigy who mastered the mandolin by the age of 9 years old,
ShriniVas shows himself as “a divine force expressing itself through him in his tiny instrument". John McLaughlin delivered an extraordinary set of guitar grooves weaving his melodies throughout, proving again to me that he is of the great jazz guitarists. He repeatedly shocked the audience with his creativity and understanding of the other musicians on stage. The two showed unlimited intensity and talent, joining the percussion and giving us a wide variety of melodies.
Since rejoining Hussain in Remember Shakti, McLaughlin has proven that
some ”old sparks never die” as these two still play brilliantly together after 25 years. With the addition of ShriniVas and Slevaganesh, the members of Remember Shakti made for a dynamic quartet and I encourage all to check out these musicians, both as a unit and as soloists. The culmination of Indian musical influences with Western Jazz in this performance has proved to be a cultural and musical masterpiece.
Jodi Epstein
JamBase San Francisco Correspondent
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