L Shankar, Shakti’s lesser-known founding member is back and he has a story to tell

During the 2023 golden jubilee tour, the band members spoke warmly of the mandolin great U Srinivas, a fixture in the ’90s, who passed away in 2014, and of flautist Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, who briefly played with them.

The tour took place with Mclaughlin, Hussain, an ageing Vinayakram, newer members Shankar Mahadevan (vocals), Ganesh Rajagopalan (violin) and V Selvaganesh (kanjira).

But amid the glowing tributes to the power of Shakti, there was no sign of Shankar, one of its original four pillars who wrote many of the initial Shakti melodies with Mclaughlin. The reason for his absence didn’t seem clear. When asked Selvaganesh and Rajagopalan refrained from commenting.

But Shankar wants to talk. “I was never asked to be a part of the tour. They never invited me,” says Shankar, in a Zoom conversation.

We find Shankar in Malaysia, days before he reaches Mumbai, where on June 16 he performs as part of Aditya Birla — ‘Masters of Music’ concert at the Jamshed Bhabha Auditorium, NCPA. He will join forces with Vinayakram, his son Selvaganesh and grandson Swaminathan besides Hussain’s brother and tabla exponent, Ustad Fazal Qureshi.

“A lot of the performance will comprise music from the three Shakti albums, ones with Shankar, besides a few classical pieces. There, of course, will be a lot of improvisations on stage,” says Qureshi.

Shankar with Hussain, Mclaughlin and Vinayakram

A New York Times review of Shakti from 1977 describes Shankar’s music as “simply overwhelming” and his “improvisations of great passion” as the ones that come with “originality and substance”. It’s surprising then that he is not well-known in India beyond some members of the music community.

Many ask if there is a connection with Pt Ravi Shankar. There isn’t. This is despite his significant stint with Shakti, being called “probably the best violinist in the world” by American musical iconoclast Frank Zappa, his work with noted composer Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of the Christ (1988) and winning a Grammy in 1994 for Passions — Sources, a companion album which contained on-location recordings and pieces from the Scorsese film.

He has another Grammy nomination to his credit from 1996 for his album Raga Aberi with Hussain and Vinayakram on percussion. He’s even built a 10-string, stereophonic double-necked electric violin to make music “more satisfying”.

“Usually, I am not the guy who posts a lot about himself. And essentially I’m working like 17-18 hours a day — composing, giving classes. You can find me at the concerts,” says Shankar, who speaks the way he plays: with utmost speed. “I feel like I am this Olympic athlete. There are so many different genres I am working with,” he adds.

Now 74, Shankar is far away from his curly-haired Shakti days. But even with his straight blonde hair dancing around his shoulders, it’s not difficult to spot a likeness to his elder brother, noted violinist L Subramaniam.

Shankar’s musical ideology and rebellion against anything that stood in the way of one’s freedom probably comes from his formative years in Chennai, where he was born to music professor V Lakshminarayana and vocalist and veena player L Seethalakshmi, the youngest of six children.

He began learning vocal music at the age of two, violin at five, mridangam at seven and Western music at eight. While his father taught him Carnatic classical, he was keen that his sons learned Western music, too. Then there was Shankar’s eldest brother, L Vaidyanathan, also a classical violinist, who was fascinated by western pop and rock music and was an avid LP collector.

So at home, Shankar had access to a wide range of music, from John Coltrane and Miles Davis to The Beatles and Elvis Presley. “Which is why I am so comfortable with western music. The other day (American songwriter) Lou Reed called me and said that I only have four bars, can you do something with it? I told him it’s more than enough,” he says.

The family was living in Jaffna when it was forced to move back to Chennai after the ethnic riots of 1956 and their house was set ablaze. In Chennai, the three brothers began performing as the ‘Violin Trio’ and were hugely successful.

“Indian music comes with ear training, it’s such that it opens up your mind,” says Shankar, who often accompanied artistes like Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and Palghat Mani Iyer. But he wanted more and felt India was restrictive. “For me, this bit of following the way it was meant, is very boring.

Tyagaraja was a great musician but when he is being played 200 years down the line, it’s significant to have one’s own composition and improvisation,” says Shankar. “My father told me it would be difficult for me to live and work in India because of my thought process,” he says, having moved to the US at 19 to study physics before getting an ethnomusicology doctorate.

In 1972, when Mclaughlin was studying veena under the aegis of Dr S Ramanathan, he was introduced to Shankar, by Raghavan. Soon the three began to jam together with Raghavan on mridangam.

After Hussain came in, the band became Shakti, a name that literally meant power and a moniker that the West could easily pronounce and relate to. Raghavan left; he didn’t want to tour and Vinayakram and his ghatam came in. “It’s really not about virtuoso musicians jamming together. You have to know the mind of your fellow artistes,” says Shankar about playing with Shakti.

While Mclaughlin would play with western harmony besides elements of Indian classical, Shankar worked with a larger raga structure, both trying to improvise in a parallel space. The percussion — tabla and ghatam — is what bound them.

Shakti was experimenting with the amalgamation of not only music from East and West but also the classical forms from north and south India, something rarely attempted then. Amid all of this, including criticism by jazz and Indian purists, somewhere, alchemy was reached.

The way for Shakti had already been paved by sitar giant Pt Ravi Shankar and violinist Yehudi Menuhin when they tried their east and west collaboration with Ustad Alla Rakha on the tabla.

L Shankar with his double violin

“In Shakti, Shankar was doing chord progressions and John was playing alaaps — both incredibly difficult things to do for them, but they were doing it. Fusion music did not exist in India. It happened later on. But ‘the later on’ happened because Shakti made their music,” says Qureshi.

Rajagopalan and Selvaganesh, current members of Shakti, were children in Chennai when Vinayakram would bring back recordings of the Shakti sessions.

“I remember Shankarji to be my favourite violinist. When I’d come from school, often the first thing I’d play was the Raagam,Taanam, Pallavi (ECM Records, 1990),” says Selvaganesh. Rajagopalan remembers Shankar’s playing to be “like a bullet train,” adding, “He brought Indian violin to the world stage.”

In 1978, Shakti broke up. Mclaughlin in his later interviews spoke of Shankar “wanting to do more of a pop thing” and the band breaking as a result. Shankar denies and claims that it was “John’s decision” and that he never decided to leave Shakti.

“At that time, John was majorly into jazz, and, of course, there is nothing wrong with it, but I am under the impression that there are other kinds of great music too… We had many rehearsals and everyone was really passionate. When it became big, they didn’t have time for rehearsals,” says Shankar.

After Shakti disbanded, Hussain and Mclaughlin did a short UK tour of Shakti in 1984. It was in 1997 that the Arts Council in Britain contacted Hussain to renew the band. There were many interviews given about how Shankar was not available.

In an interview to Innerviews, an online music magazine, Mclaughlin said, “I said ‘Why don’t we try to get Shankar.’ We left messages and tried to get through by fax and any way possible. So, we said ‘Let’s go another way’ and we invited Vikku’s son Selvaganesh.”

Shankar says he never vanished anywhere. “I was right there, working. I was in England and working with Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, also on my solo albums. They (Mclaughlin and Hussain) even put out a lot of the interviews saying that I wasn’t available. I was quite hurt. It’s not true,” says Shankar, who met Zappa around the same time in Germany at a music festival.

A casual jam turned into a collaborative album, performances and friendship that stayed till the musician’s death in 1993.

Shankar soon became Shenkar — the accented pronunciation turning into a stage name and an acclaimed sessions musician with many releases. He was working on Zappa’s album Touch Me There, when he was unable to find musicians who could deliver the Indian glides and trimmings, which led him to overdub the recordings.

So he decided to create the double-necked electronic violin that he now plays. It has the effect of a complete string section — double bass and cello to the violin and viola in one instrument. “It’s a very heavy instrument, but he manages to play on it. It’s incredible,” says Selvaganesh.

Shankar, who lived in the US for many years, has now begun to divide his time between Goa, Kerala and Los Angeles.

But living away, making music was as gratifying as it was lonely.

“It’s not like I want to live in America. Making music can be very lonely. While the other musicians partied, I’d stay put in my hotel room for hours, sit and work, on a new composition, on finding a newer idea. My mom would ask me to get married, live in India… Sure, it would have been easier. I went through a difficult life. But I gave up something to be where I am,” says Shankar.