Regarding SHAKTI

 

I generally consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about music. Yet I am frequently amazed to find bands/genres that I missed. Some I missed because I was simply not aware of them. Others because I did not listen to them for one reason or another. One of the joys of aging is looking back and discovering these ‘missing’ cultural icons.

My most recent ‘find’ is SHAKTI, the second stage of John McLaughlin’s fusion of Jazz and Indian music. Of course, McLaughlin was no stranger to jazz fusion. After a carrier in England as a jazz guitarist, he moved to the United States, forming first a trio with Tony Williams, then along with Williams joining Miles Dav. McLaughlin then fused jazz and rock with Indian music in the legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra. SHAKTI takes a larger step and performs as a traditional Indian ensemble with Zakir Hussein on table, L. Shankar on violin and McLaughlin’s guitar taking the place of the sitar, with complex rhythms and much improvisation. The band performed through the 70s, reuniting in 1997 as Remembering Shakti and then again in 2000. Their tour in 2023 resulted in the Grammy winning album This Moment, their first album in 46 years.

Of course I knew McLaughlin from his time with Miles Davis. He joined Davis’ ensemble months after arriving from the UK as Davis was assembling a diverse group of talented musicians to augment the core of the second quintet and begin work on In A Silent Way. Recorded in single three hour session in February of 1969, the album is considered by many to be the first jazz fusion album. Rock critics loved it, jazz critics were angered and baffled. The following year Bitches Brew was recorded. The rest is history.

Davis’ music became more electronic. Wayne Shorter and Josef Zawinul formed the pre-eminent fusion group Weather Report. And McLaughlin fused jazz with Indian music and formed The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

And that’s where my interest in fusion came to an end.

I was pretty much done with amplified music. I abandoned jazz, and even abandoned most Rock, certainly progressive and blues based rock. My musical interest were best exemplified by Bartok, Beethoven and Shostakovich. And of course Willie Nelson.

I left Austin, moved to Dallas. Became a display carpenter, got married, had a family. And now I’m retired, looking back and enjoying the music I missed. My sons became lovers of bluegrass, and after some resistance I have joined them. My new heroes are Tony Rice and Bela Fleck.

A couple of years ago we met the boys for a memorable weekend in Houston to see Bela Fleck’s latest All-Star ensemble My American Heart. And then last year, Susan and I attended Bela’s other latest endeavor, fusing bluegrass with Indian music, playing with Edgar Wright and Zakir Hussein (reference SHAKTI above.) As with SHAKTI, the group performed in traditional Indian array, with a standup bass and the banjo taking the place of the sitar. Songs were in raga form, with complex rhythms and scales and much improvisation.

And then, this week I discover SHAKTI.

The circle is completed.

Deep Fears

We had just finished watching our shows when we decided to check the news. The headline flashed across the screen. 

War. Russia had invaded Ukraine. 

A chill raced down my spine.

Suddenly I was 12 years old, running to the front door of our house where my youngest sister was standing, tears running down her cheeks.

"We're at war," she sobbed. "We're at war with Russia."

I was stunned. Her words echoed my worst nightmares. I lived in fear of Atomic weapons. I had read books and seen photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I studied the ranges of the missiles of the day and stared at maps plotting the distance from Cuba to Atlanta.

At school we practiced duck and cover. We knew our emergency plans. Rendevous points where I would gather my sisters. We even practiced walking home together, taking the most direct route which meant following the railroad tracks, not the streets. Walking home to a place that I knew could not protect us from the nuclear fallout.

Those were the thoughts. Then there were the dreams. The nuclear nightmares. 

The sixty intervening years dissolved in a flash.

First Pots

 We bought our first pot in Taos forty years ago, an etched seed pot by Raymond Tafoya. Thirty years ago we met Sandra Victorino at a fair in Dallas. We were amazed at the way she painted. Susan found an old Hopi pot in Fredericksburg and then we were hooked, buying as we could on our annual vacation. When our son moved to Santa Fe frequency of our visits increased and so did our collecting. We were fortunate to inherit some nice pieces and researching their provenance kicked our collecting chops up a notch. We began to focus on older pieces and pieces with linkage to the great Matriarchs. Our knowledge deepened during the pandemic as we spent hours online with MarvinLee Martinez, Dee Setalla, Dominique Tafoya and especially Franklin Peters as they livestreamed. And we significantly expanded our collection. So our tastes which started in Santa Clara and San Ildefonso, are now focused on Acoma and Hopi. We love new pots with a nod to traditional designs and we love older pieces because 'old pots got a lotta soul.'

On the Fall of Kabul

In the spring of 1975 I was backpacking through Europe with my cousin Sam. We each had books. I was reading Report to Greco by Nikos Kazantazakis. I bought it in Athens and read it on the ferry to Crete where we rode motorcycles over the mountains and slept under olive trees and in fields with goats.

Sam read Etruscan Places by D.H. Lawrence so it was natural that after several days in Rome he wanted to visit the ancient tombs, so we did. We took a bus and I remember a long walk up the hill to the ancient town of Tarquinia. The old town was eerily quiet as we roamed the streets. No wonder. It was May Day. Shops were locked and the tombs were closed. We found an old cafe in which to sit and have a glass of wine. 

The afternoon was warm. The late afternoon sun beamed through beads hanging in the arched doorway leading to the cobbled street. A cat lay on the dusty floor basking in the sunlight. Outside, crowds began to gather and then fast racing bicyles flashed by, the crowd cheering as they approached the finish line. May Day in Tarquinia.

The next day Sam wanted to go back to see the tombs, but I didn't want to spend another day riding in buses so I stayed in Rome. After an espresso, I took my pastry and newspaper and wandered up on the Palatine hill overlooking the Roman Forum where I sat down to eat and catch up on the news.

The front page was filled with the news from Saigon. The famous photograph of the helicopter dangling helpless Vietnamese as it took off the US Embassy was emblazoned over the fold. As my eyes gazed on the ruins of the Rome, I read of the fall of Saigon.

The Vietnam War had occupied over half my life. As a young boy, I remembered being puzzled by fighting and booby traps in rice paddies in the Buzz Sawyer comic strip. An uncle had written news stories from Vietnam for the Saturday Evening Post. My godfather had studied Vietnamese and been stationed in Saigon in the early sixties. 

In high school civics class we debated continued involvement in the war. Like most kids my age I was brought up in the patriotic, post war Fifties. We played war and fought imaginary battles with the Nazis and the Japanese. We were taught about the Declaration of Independence and that all men were free and equal.

Eventually that bubble began to crack. Civil Rights was the first stone. I remember being shocked when men at my church wore campaign buttons for the gubernatorial candidate whom I knew to be a racist. I remember sit ins. I remember the March on Washington. I remember the Birmingham bombings. I remember black and white water fountains. The color of the paint let you know which was which.

I was one of the few in that civics class who volunteered to debate against the war. And soon the arguments began to make sense. The debate was national. Ali chose not to serve and was jailed. Dr. King came out against the war. In 1967 I wore a McCarthy button to church and felt the wrath and scorn.

In Austin I was an antiwar activist and marched and protested. 

The War in Vietnam was a large part of my life. It tore the United States apart in ways from which it has not healed. 

These were my thoughts as i sat on the Palatine Hill overlooking the ruins of Rome.

And these were my thoughts today as I watched the news from Afghanistan unfold on the screen in my living room.

Well That Was a Great Start

A great start
lousy follow through.
story of my life.
no time for promises.
see if I can get back here
tomorrow.
or the next day
or the day after that

Prologue

I've written many, many posts, but have written none of them down.

I write them when I'm awake in bed in the morning hours before dawn. These days I frequently wake up on the couch after sleeping through who knows what on the TV and then head to bed. Where I can NOT get back to sleep. My brain wakes up and takes off. Maybe it's REM time. Sometimes I see moving patterns. Hallucinations? I don't know. But frequently I imagine that I am writing. Brilliant stuff, by the way.

I write them when I'm walking. Rant and dialogue flow freely with every step.

I write them when I'm driving. Sports commentary and political discussion of the highest order.

I've tried making notes and occasionally have sat down at a keyboard, but the inspiration does not flow and the words seem silly on the screen.

I tried to write journals, poetry and even fiction years ago as a skinny philosophy student and would be poet, sometimes by hand, sometimes on a beat up old typewriter that once lived in the bookkeeping office in the old Baker Hotel in downtown Dallas. In my mind I can be there still, on a warm Austin summer afternoon in the old house on 22nd at David that was the first Austin Women's Center and where the guy drove his car into the block party one fall evening while Ramon, Ramon and the Daddios were rockin' Bo Biddley. I am there, it feels almost as if I were there right now. But the words, the images did not flow.

So it's 3:40 am, the kitchen is dark except for the light of the screen and I am writing.

Now.

And maybe I can go to bed and get some sleep.

And maybe tomorrow the words will not seem too weird and I will write some more.