Shakti, Revisited, Is Up to Old and New Tricks

When John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain got together in the mid-1970sto create the pioneering group Shakti, world music as a genre was barely a blip on the horizon. But the encounters between jazz, rock and Indian music that took place between guitarist McLaughlin, tabla player Hussain, violinist L. Shankar and ghatam (clay pot) percussionist T.H. Vinayakram provided eye- and ear-opening opportunities to experience a breadth of music that reached well beyond the then-commonly accepted musical orbits of the United States and Europe.

Saturday night, McLaughlin and the latest installment of that ensemble, Remember Shakti, make their first appearance on the West Coast at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

The return has been a long time coming, in part because both McLaughlin and Hussain moved on to other arenas of expression as world music, in all its many manifestations, exploded into view. And it wasn’t until 1997 that the pair--almost casually--decided to revisit Shakti.

“The Asian Music Society of Britain,” says McLaughlin, “had asked Zakir to do something for the 50th anniversary of India.

“Celebrating their liberation from, you know,” he adds with a laugh, “the smelly English. So he called me, an Englishman. Although my family’s Irish; I’m not really that English, thank God. Anyhow, I said, ‘Why don’t we get Shakti together again?’ Zakir agreed, but when we couldn’t find Shankar, we invited Hariprasad Chaurasia, a wonderful bamboo flutist whom we both knew from concerts and recordings, etc., to join us.

“We really had no plans to record. After all, this was just going to be a five-concert tour. The tapings we did were intended just for our personal libraries. But when we heard the playbacks from those few concerts, and they were so beautiful, Zakir and I decided we should put a CD out, and Universal very kindly agreed to release it.”

That album, “Remembering Shakti,” was a highly praised two-CD set released last year. And McLaughlin and Hussain, clearly savoring their extraordinarily intuitive musical interaction, were eager to proceed via a follow-up tour and recording with yet another Shakti installment.

“We wanted to continue but we still couldn’t get Shankar, and Hariprasad wasn’t available either. Then I recalled a video I saw probably 20 years ago of Vinayakram’s son, [Vinayakram] ‘Vikku’ Salvanesh, who also plays ghatam. And he was performing with this incredible 12-year-old mandolinist, Uppalapu Shrinivas, who was playing with the most amazing feelings and wonderful mastery of his instrument.

“Well, that was 20 years ago, so you can imagine how well he plays now. I brought it up with Zakir, and he thought it was a great idea to bring them both into the group, a kind of second-generation Shakti. And it made a lot of musical sense as well, since the mandolin is like the younger sister of the guitar. I’d been using electric guitar--jazz guitar--with Shakti, since I felt that the jazz spirit was closer to the spirit of Shakti. I’ve never regretted that decision, especially now that Shrinivas is in the band with electric mandolin. It’s like a musical marriage made in heaven.”

McLaughlin is clearly having the time of his life with Shakti revisited. And for those who remember the original Shakti, the reasons will quickly become apparent in the group’s Royce appearance.

The juxtaposition of the two veteran players--McLaughlin and Hussain--with the considerably younger Salvanesh and Shrinivas has triggered all sorts of explosive musical flash points, in part because the Indian players are so much more familiar with Western music than were their predecessors, in part because of their sheer youthful fearlessness.

“Start with the fact that these guys can do anything, rhythmically, in any environment, in any rhythmical cycle, at any tempo,” says McLaughlin. “They’re phenomenal together. Add to that the fact that they already know a lot about Western music, and they’re interested in building bridges between East and West. And that makes it a lot easier to pull them over to my side, much more than I was able to do with the first Shakti.

“It means that I can do things like bring Shrinivas into much more chromaticism, which is one of the aspects of Western music that you rarely hear in Indian music. But he’s just as hungry to learn about Western music as I am to learn about Indian music.”

McLaughlin is quick to add that his own hunger is constantly being rewarded in the group’s adventurous performances. “We all go tightrope-walking every night,” he says. “But it’s not like walking between two skyscrapers alone; we’re doing it with a bunch of other guys. And the results just border on the magical for me.”

Asked if tightrope-walking, individually or in a group, doesn’t ever generate second thoughts about safety, especially for an artist who has been on the scene for more than four decades, McLaughlin grunts disapproval at even mentioning the thought.

“Not a chance,” he says. “I’m not made that way. Sure, I might have regretted not taking a more conservative path at different periods of my life, but what are you going to do? Are you going to go against your nature?

“You’re going to get in trouble if you do that,” McLaughlin says. “So you just have to keep following your nose, or at the very least, keep following your instincts.”

* John McLaughlin and Remember Shakti at Royce Hall, UCLA, Saturday at 8 p.m. (310) 825-2101. Tickets $40, $30, $25.

In Print: “Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians” (University of California Press, $37.50), by Floyd Levin. In a publishing genre crowded with random collections of reviews, profiles and features, Levin’s book offers a far richer, more intimate perspective. On the jazz scene for more than 50 years, Levin is particularly effective with swing and New Orleans music, his personal friendships with musicians providing a panoply of anecdotal observations. Equally important, he seems to have no ax to grind, preferring instead to be a personal filter through which the music and the musicians can receive their most credible hearing.

Riffs: Billy Joel will host PBS’ “Piano Grand! A Smithsonian Celebration” on Nov. 29, a tribute to the 300th anniversary of the instrument’s invention. Among the jazz artists scheduled to perform are Billy Taylor, Diana Krall, Dave Brubeck, Cyrus Chestnut, Marcus Roberts, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Eliane Elias. . . . Singer-pianist-actor Harry Connick Jr. is reportedly in the running to star with Sarah Jessica Parker in “Life Without Dick,” described as a dark romantic comedy about a mob hit man who wants to become an Irish tenor.

Go figure.