Music Record - Shakti - This Moment

As a cornerstone of what is now called World Music, the vision and virtuosity of Shakti has inspired generations of musicians from around the world to explore sonic hybrids once thought impossible. Born of the musical and spiritual brotherhood shared by the revolutionary British guitarist and bandleader John McLaughlin and master Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, Shakti's soulful, organic intermingling of Eastern and Western musical traditions has proven transformative for both the band's members and it's listeners. Fifty years after the informal conversations and jam sessions that sparked the band into existence, their music continues to resonate and evolve. This Moment - Shakti's first new studio album in more than 45 years. A work of immense depth and radiant optimism, This Moment offers a set of new compositions and performances that burn with a rare intensity born out of passion. With McLaughlin (guitar, guitar synth) and Hussain (tabla) joined by vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram, the Shakti of now is a powerfully dynamic collective, defined by deft interplay, dazzling unison passages, extraordinarily dexterous improvisations, and the ability to draw from a vast well of global traditions and, miraculously, put them in conversation with one another.Despite the large gap in their studio discography, Shakti has persisted intermittently over the years as a live proposition, releasing several concert recordings. "Shakti is very much a 'live' band," explains McLaughlin. "A part of the problem with making a studio recording has always been the fact that we live on different continents, and we all follow our individual careers – in addition to working together in Shakti. This Moment is the result of me calling everyone in the fall of 2021 and persuading them to use today's recording technology to realize it." Recorded and mixed in the U.S., Monaco, India, and Great Britain, This Moment is nevertheless cohesive, bound by the deeply held bond shared by the players - a bond that is audibly apparent across the album's eight tracks.The compositions making up This Moment each pass through a series of connected movements, highlighting different vocal and instrumental sub-groups within Shakti while transitioning between taut thematic statements, riveting solos from McLaughlin and Rajagopalan, invigorating rhythmic shifts, and soaring vocal passages by Mahadevan. The increased use of vocals – both sung and konokol (a Southern Indian tradition of spoken percussion) - gives today's Shakti a new degree of warmth, humanity, and universality. McLaughlin's contributions are remarkable in their ability to reconcile the great Ragas of North and South India with a chromaticism born of jazz and the blues, and the speed and precision of his articulation remains exhilarating. The engine room of Hussain and Vinayakram (son of original Shakti ghatam player T.H. "Vikku" Vinayakram) gives space to allow pas