A Handful of Beauty

Nice name, isnt it? I wish we could always see beauty around us, but that seems very hard now & then. I guess my friend G. and I have been on parallel quests of a similar nature - trying to find things that can calm us down every now & then, that can help us stop, listen to ourselves and the endless expanse above and beyond us...something that can help us make peace with things happening around us, things that we cannot control...G. mentioned a poem by Robert Frost called "Acceptance":

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, "Safe"!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.

Isnt it quite profound? Beautiful lines indeed.

I came across this album called A Handful of Beauty, one of the first albums of Shakti. In the 1970’s critics thought John McLaughlin had committed commercial suicide by abandoning electric instruments and Western sensibilities in favor of an all-acoustic group with Indian musicians. In fact, record sales for this group, Shakti, were quite disappointing. Sometimes though, a musician has to follow his inner feeling. In this case, McLaughlin was led to create a very fertile groundbreaking group in the form of Shakti. John was heavily influenced by Indian art & music and a great follower of Sri Chinmoy. In fact, it was Sri Chinmoy who suggested the name Mahavishnu Orchestra - one of the fusion groups John started, and arguably thought as the finest fusion rock group.

A Handful of Beauty has some memerising compositions. L. Shankar with his unique 5 string - violin and John McLaughlin are brilliant as usual and it also has one of the most amazing percussion duets I have heard - between Zakir Hussain and Vikku (T.H. Vinayakram). Simply superb. I wish I could see this in a live concert.

I simply have to write about Lotus Feet from the album Remember Shakti, a revival of the original Shakti group which happened in the 1990s and included the brilliant U. Shrinivas on the mandolin. Lotus Feet is this supremely sublime composition by U.Shrinivas, John McLaughlin & Zakir. It is actually a much slower one as compared to the other Shakti compositions, and requires much more attentive listening to appreciate it. I have listened to it hundreds of times, and it still has an amazing calming effect on my senses.