Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Rakesh Chaurasia and V Selvaganesh win big at 66th Grammys

“The discovery, each time you sit as a group to play and perform, is like climbing Everest from different angles. Every time, it is a whole different point of view, marvelling at how you do the same but it’s not the same,” Hussain had said in a statement about the album that attempts to intermingle Eastern and Western sounds and North Indian classical music with Carnatic classical music.

Hussain, who was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan last year, won two more Golden Gramophones – one for the Best Global Music Performance for the song ‘Pashto’ – from the album ‘As We Speak’, which was created in collaboration with flautist Rakesh Chaurasia (nephew of Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia), American banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and noted composer and bassist Edgar Meyer. ‘As We Speak’ was also declared the Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.

Rakesh touched Hussain’s feet on stage, before the tabla maestro, dressed in an all-white ensemble – a white kurta, trousers, and an embroidered jacket – accepted the golden gramophone and said, “…Without love, without music, without harmony, we are nothing”.

‘Pashto’ went on to beat Falu and Gaurav Shah’s ‘Abundance in Millets’, a song about millets that also gave a Grammy nomination to PM Narendra Modi, whose speeches were included in the song.

It was a 1973 meeting between Mclaughlin and Hussain through a Greenwich shop owner that led to the creation of Shakti – a world music band at a time when world music was not even a term that was easily identified. Also, comprising violinist L Shankar and ghatam expert Vikku Vinayakram back then, the group was merging Indian music with jazz and creating a unique sound. While the audience all over the world was excited, the world of jazz purists frowned.

But Shakti was to find its groove to influence generations of musicians worldwide. The band disbanded in 1978 but Hussain and Mclaughlin kept in touch, collaborating in 1984 for a short Shakti tour. But it was in 1997 when the Arts Council in Britain contacted Hussain to renew the band. The revised line-up had mandolin giant U Srinivas and flute legend Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia for a while. Mahadevan, Selvaraj, and Rajagopalan joined much later but brought a different vigour to the idea of common ground through varied styles.

Fifty years later, Shakti, with its new members and founders Hussain and Mclaughlin embarked upon their 50th-year tour in January 2023 to celebrate the music they had worked hard on for half a century and released ‘This Moment’. “This album is a crystallisation of five decades of love and dedication. Our musical evolution recorded here, is a revolution in the history of Shakti,” Mclaughliln had said in a statement last year.

US-based India-origin pianist Vijay Iyer, who was nominated with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily for ‘Shadow Forces’ for the well-known Punjabi song ‘Haayo rabba nayiyo lagda dil mera’ in the Best Alternative Jazz Album category, was bested by 55-year-old American musician Meshell Ndegeocello for her album ‘The Omnichord Real Book’.