Yet Untitled Lite 014 - Shakti and their Friendships

An evocation and tribute to those I treasure at work

Dear Yet Untitler,

There is much I want to say, but the ol’ pia mater feels like it’s been pureéd into pia mater pâté. So I’ll keep it short.

This week, I watched Shakti perform live at the NSCI dome in South Mumbai. Shakti and I go way back - I’ve listened to them throughout my early 20s, during a pretty impressionable phase of my life. It’s definitely a band of geniuses - just read the Wikipedia page - and the idea was for the West of guitarist John McLaughlin to meet the East of tabla master Zakir Hussain. Various other highly accomplished musicians have come and gone from Shakti over the years, but the lineup I saw was percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram, vocalist Shankar Mahadevan and violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan teaming up with Zakir and John.

And they rocked.

But the music, for me, was only half the bounty. What was fantastic to see was the affection each member had for the all the others. It was a very special kind of affection - a mix of reverence, adulation and celebration which translated to expressions of unfiltered joy on their faces while they played with each other. It was really something to see.

To give you context, Shakti was formed in 1973. These dudes have been played together for 50 years! And, if this video from 1976 relays the truth, they were already having a lot of fun three years into their journey together.

Now look at this video from 35 years later. They’ve all aged. Some of them have changed: the slight man - T.H. Vikku Vinayakram - playing the upturned earthen pot (the ghatam) in the earlier video has been replaced by his son - Selvaganesh. But the joy has deepened by extreme and unfathomable degrees - just see John McLaughlin’s face at 27:40 in the video below.

By the time I saw them playing in 2023, each of their skills had elevated to a place where the word ‘genius’ had become small change before the bigger currency of their monumental talents. That night, they played about seven or eight pieces. Each song was at around ten minutes or longer, keeping space for at least one of them to have centre stage where they rocked the house with a solo. What really struck me was the way in which the others supported the one whose turn it was to shine - patiently marking their time with their claps, faces anticipating the next surprise they’d swing, exclaiming genuine praise on top of the already giant heap of praise they must have

I don’t make music (I would love to, but the best I can manage is a both of bathroom singing and five chords on the Ukulele), but I do have looonnnggg collaborations in my life. What’s great is that a lot of my longtime collaborators are also my longtime friends. I written about these long friendships in a previous instalment:

Yet Untitled 014 - A Long Newsletter about Long Friendships

Watching Shakti on stage got me thinking about these relationships. One common thread running through all of them is this - it’s not just work. It’s dinners, barbecues, long drives, birthday wishes, phone calls with bad news, phone calls with good news, walks, visits, research trips, bottles of wine, mugs of beer, cooking pasta, building relationships with the others’ spouses…the list goes on. Come to think of it, in some of these relationships, the actual work forms a smaller proportion of the time spent together, even though the basis of the relationship is definitely the work.

I tried to imagine some of the interludes the Shakti people would have shared between their concerts - when they weren’t working. There would have been barbecues, temple visits, drives down the PCH and meals eaten cross legged on the floor. I thought, “all that affection must have needed a place to express itself off stage as well”. In my experience, working closely with someone tells me so much about who they are, and often, I end up treasuring them. Thereafter, the time spent with them outside the work feels like a reward.

MH and me in Berlin. Good German beer lining our work conversations, c. 2018

There was another thought - the fact that each of Shakti’s members are accomplished artists in their own right, the act of coming together on a stage must be a hard won feat in itself. I have many friends now with whom working with was a version of what the Shakti musicians feel when they play together, but man are they busy! However, as I keep thinking - there’s so much to look forward to!

Dear Somo, a great dad and cinematographer. Our children playing together, c. 2019

I think back to the time when I made my first short film - there were so many of us working on that film who were at a place in life where there was a little too much time on our hands. We were so available for each other, that itself is a fantastic memory! Now, most of the cast and crew have gone on to become busy, in-demand professionals. The fact that we could come together like that on a whim feels like an evocation of a golden, innocent age!

VM and me, on the sets of SHANU TAXI, c. 2006

But the work bound us together. If the melody we created didn’t exist, neither would the fantastic narrative of innocence and growth. Again, there’s so much to look forward to!

I feel happy that so many of my work relationships occupy this long arc. I think about the music we will make when we are old and still working together. I look forward to smiling at them like John McLaughlin does as he picks up on Zakir’s rhythm, experiencing a joy that I think is the birthright of each and every one of us.

Managers and clients who run together crack great deals together. DD anf me, c 2015.

Thanks for listening !