JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
Rating: 
Shakti’s second album finds them taking a slightly more meditative approach than their fire eating debut. What’s lost in energy is made up for in the cohesiveness of the band.
It truly is a band, too. John McLaughlin’s acoustic guitar does not really dominate. Equal time is given to L. Shankar’s violin and Zakir Hussain’s tabla. Shankar writes as many of the tunes as McLaughlin, and it’s not easy to tell who wrote which.
The opener, La Danse Du Bonheur, begins with a bout of vocal percussion, called solkattu (I wonder if McLaughlin participated), before breaking into an A section in which a melody fragment is repeated twice before being extensively elaborated on before ending in a brief restatement of the fragment to end the section. The melody is doubled by McLaughlin and L. Shankar. The B section follows a similar pattern, using the same modal scale, but the feel of the two melodic fragments is completely different. The melodic fragment that serves as the seed of the B section reminds me of the theme to the old cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo for some reason. L. Shankar takes the solo, utilizing the same modal scale. I cannot comment much more on the content of this solo since I don’t know a whole lot about the karnatic music tradition, but McLaughlin strums rhythmic patterns underneath using a technique familiar from his work on Miles’ Jack Johnson date, adapted to South Indian classical music patterns, of course.
Oddly enough, the chord structure of next tune, Lady L, sounds rather Western. Shankar, who wrote the tune, has McLaughlin play the chords as arpeggios with widely spaced voicings. The melody, however, is unmistakably Indian in origin. After the lovely and ethereal introduction, things get decidedly thornier. Series of melodic fragments, alternating between short and long phrases, are doubled by McLaughlin and Shankar, echoed by Zakir Hussain’s tabla and T. H. Vinayalaram’s clay drum (ghatam). A brief percussion interlude segues into McLaughlin’s solo in which the rhythmic content and modal scale is predetermined. The only improvisation going on is the note choices and where McLaughlin chooses to include ornamentation, such as shakes, slides and bends. His virtuosity and apparent understanding of the karnatic music tradition is humbling. He must have worked like a bastard to pull that off.
On India, McLaughlin starts off the piece with a solo in which he utilizes ridiculously deep bends of two whole tones or more, some of which he accomplishes by using the tuning knobs on his guitar, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. He augments the melody with a rhythmic drone from his 11 string guitar. The mood of the piece is melancholy and ruminative. L. Shankar bows out the melody while McLaughlin backs him with arpeggiations which are are a constant stream of eighth notes but are broken up into fragments by changing the harmonic rhythm. Slowly the tune heats up, as L. Shankar and McLaughlin take turns improvising over the rhythmic underpinning of Zakir Hussain’s tabla and T. H. Vinayalaram’s clay drum.
Kriti is the only selection which is an authentic traditional South Indian tune, but it fits right in with the others, which gives you an idea of where on the continuum of East to West A Handful of Beauty lies.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
A Handful of Beauty (released on the Columbia label) is a true East/West fusion, where McLaughlin has clearly made an effort to understand the karnatic tradition. He contributes some Western harmonic ideas and instrumental techniques, but the bulk of the material is taken from South Indian classical sources. In my opinion, it is entirely successful, thanks to McLaughlin’s dedication, the incredibly strong playing from the Indian members of the group, and the shocking amount of empathy between McLaughlin and the rest of the group.