CAUGHT...
McLaughlin's Shakti and Weather Report:
Some Defused Fusions
By Michael Rozek
(Reprinted from Down Beat magazine: June 1976)
WEATHER REPORT
Personnel: Wayne Shorter, reeds, Lyricon; Joe Zawinul, keyboards; Jaco
Pastorius, electric bass; Alejandro Acuna, drums; Manolo Badrena Medina,
percussion.
SHAKTI
Personnel: John McLaughlin, acoustic guitar; L. Shankar, vlolin; Zakir
Hussain, tabla; T. H. Vinayakram, ghatham (claypot).
Beacon Theatre, New York City
Shakti, an all-acoustic group, is John McLaughlin and three Indian
musicians. A different pair of females joins the band in every performance,
and these ladies play drone instruments. Opening at the Beacon, the entire
robed sextet sat in a close gaggle, front and center stage on a smaller
platform. And a whooping audience loved 'em, though I found their ultimate
achievement as modest as their format.
I'm told by manager Nat Weiss' office that Shakti's no exercise in
purism. Their charts, by Shankar and McLaughlin, use some Indian scales;
but the band's thrust is improvisation - something new for the Indians
involved. "Yet," reflected Carlos Santana in a recent Rolling Stone, "it's
hard to say (Shakti's) music is new because it was played before Christ."
My feeling exactly. Santana goes on to say Shakti "sounds new because
[McLaughlin's] combining the West and the East." But I couldn't hear any
sweeping fusion - the Indian influence predominated.
Shakti's sound was linear, patterned, repetitive rhythm. And accompanying
melodies and solos seemed harmonically restricted, only handmaidens to the
pulse. McLaughlin's occasional, blues-inflected note-bending provided a
slight Western tinge, but his speedy phrasing, percussively jampacked,
showed the predominate Eastern influence it always had. There have been no
significant stylistic alterations, a point further borne out by his duets
with the drummers and Shankar, strongly reminiscent in their pacings of
past duels with Billy Cobham and Jerry Goodman.
So, Shakti suits McLaughlin fine. And it was a cooking little set, which
is why the audience whooped. Vinayakram's frantic drumming was a particular
hit; it got the lusty reaction usually accorded Airto or Bill Summers. And
of course, the crowd cheered McLaughlin's technical prowess. So what else
is new?
Past that rhetorical question, I have a real one. Where is this music
going to go? Santana calls Shakti's efforts "änot loudäbutäthe most intense
music that I've felt since John Coltrane was alive." Yet Coltrane - if the
comparison must be pursued - explored all the physical properties of music,
not just its percussive power. Perhaps Shakti's vision is equally
comprehensive, but I couldn't hear it on this occasion. However, maybe I
was as unattuned as Woody Allen once claimed to be viewing mime. I think he
went to watch Marcel Marceau, who was supposed to be "setting the table."
Allen only saw the Budapest String Quartet climbing in and out of a large
trunk.
Weather Report has a new bassist, Jaco Pastorius, who has contributed a
batch of new pieces to the ensemble's book. Instrumentally, he appears to
have a greater aptitude for countermelodic movement than his predecessor
Alphonso Johnson, but his role in the group is nonetheless much the same:
the keeper of time and funky bottom. Alejandro Acuna has moved from the
percussion table over to the trap set, and was far too light and weak to
support the instrumental weight of the band.
After a wonderful first half-hour or so of reworkings of tunes from the
last three albums, things began to bog down. Zawinul had been a key
orchestrator of movement in that first segment, filling gaps strikingly,
suggesting original colors as a matter of routine. But Acuna's rhythmic
uncertainty became more obvious as the ensemble balance shifted heavily to
Shorter's side. For a time, the usually finely-tuned and well-oiled Weather
Report became the rather tentative, mildly perplexed Wayne Shorter Quintet.
After some uneventful solo Pastorius (his exercise on Parker's "Donna Lee"
that opens his recent LP), there was a slight regrouping of forces on two
more Jaco tunes and a heated Afro-Cuban duet between the percussionists.
From that point, however listlessness and lack of invention prevailed for
another 30 minutes.
But chalk it up to a bad night. At its best, Weather Report is far and
away the most compelling fusion group because of the way its members
suprise/improvise within a seamless flow. Smooth movement seems to be the
be-all and end-all of most fusion ensembles, but this one strikes me as the
only one around to recognize that the flow can be intricately patterned
with changes in color, tempo, and harmonics. Their first half-hour on this
occasion - six years of albums and memorable appearances - are conclusive
evidence of their potency.
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