Guitarist John Mclaughlin on Indian collaboration

Globally renowned jazz-fusion guitarist John Mclaughlin has a long-standing relationship with India. Besides feeling that he’s lived another life here – “there are too many things here that I recognize, the life itself, the country, the culture” – he’s long emphasized that Indian music is able integrate every aspect of the human being, a feat he claims excludes western music.

“I think Indian music has had a greater impact on me than any other influence,” said Mclaughlin, 73, who has collaborated with some of the greatest North and South Indian musicians as well as legends in jazz, rock, blues as well as flamenco. And this Friday he returns to the city with his jazz-fusion quartet 4th Dimension for a show at the NCPA.
Growing up in Yorkshire, Mclaughlin’s journey Eastward has been long and storied, with him embracing a dizzying array of musical projects and styles for more than 50 years. In the early '60s, he was part of The Graham Bond Organization, an R&B group that notably featured Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, two-thirds of the supergroup, Cream (that they later formed with Eric Clapton).
He’s jammed with Jimi Hendrix and played on five studio albums with jazz legend, Miles Davis, including the gold-certified Bitches Brew (even having a track named after him). McLaughlin also collaborated with Carlos Santana, producing another gold-certified album of devotional songs.
Profoundly inspired by the teachings of his guru Sri Chinmoy, McLaughlin formed a pioneering jazz-rock fusion group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, blending electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.

Indian spiritual leader, Sri Chinmoy’s teachings really resonated with Mclaughlin, helping to cement his worldview about music and spirituality, two of his greatest pulls. When Mclaughlin first asked about the confluence of the two, he still remember his guru saying, “It’s true that music is very close to the ways of enlightenment because it’s wordless and it goes very deep into the heart and soul of the human being. But that being said, you can see god just by sweeping the streets. It’s not really what you’re doing but how you’re doing it.”
Sri Chinmoy even bestowed upon the guitarist the enviable prefix Mahavishnu. Mirroring his own continual spiritual evolution- “everyday is a new day and we are not the same as we were yesterday”— his music underwent another transformation when he formed the band Shakti with Indian violinist, Lakshminarayanan L Shankar and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, amongst others. It led to a more acoustic jazz sound deeply rooted in the Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions. Then in 1979, McLaughlin formed the Guitar Trio, with famed flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia and jazz guitarist Al Di Meola.
Numerous collaborations later, it was in the summer of 2007 that he formed the jazz-fusion quartet 4th Dimension featuring ace drummer Ranjit Barot. “At the moment my favourite collaborators are those in the 4th Dimension. There’s a very deep complicity between us that’s essential really when you’re playing music because they’ve very joyful people and there’s a great deal of joy in the music,” said Mclaughlin.
Their new album, Black Light has been hailed an intensely personal and his “greatest effort till date”, featuring songs dedicated to the Ravi Shankar, whom he studied under as well as the late greats Paco de Lucia and L Srinivas, Asked to categorize their sound, Maclughlin resists being pigeonholed, saying that he never wanted to make what is called fusion music.
“Fusion music is a term coined by the record companies for marketing purposes. The thing is that if you listen to the music. You will hear basically my entire history. Cause in music first of all, we cannot hide anything,” he said. Adding, “People call me a jazz musician and I have a jazz discipline but as the great Miles Davis once said, ‘jazz is a white man’s word’.”
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WATCH: John McLaughlin The Free Spirits - Live at Umbria Jazz Festival 1995