It seemed to Bellevue violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan an act of fate or destiny was playing out when tabla player Zakir Hussain invited him to join Shakti in 2019. The Indian music-jazz fusion group was reforming after a decades-long hiatus to play two shows in early 2020 and needed a violinist to step in for former member Lakshminarayana “L.” Shankar.
“At that point, I was just elated,” said Rajagopalan, 59, a master of Carnatic (South Indian classical) music who came to the Pacific Northwest to establish Carnatic music schools in Portland and Seattle. Rajagopalan, who moved to Bellevue in 2015, runs the eSwara School of Arts in Sammamish.
It was a full-circle moment for Rajagopalan, who’s known of the band since childhood, through former Shakti percussionist Vikku Vinayakram. Shakti is nominated for a 2024 Grammy Award for best global music album for “This Moment,” the group’s first studio album in more than 45 years.
“When I was very young, [Vinayakram] used to play with me,” said Rajagopalan, who first rose to fame as a child prodigy in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, playing with his younger brother, Kumaresh. “He used to talk about Shakti a lot, and how the group is and everything. So I’ve been knowing Shakti as a young kid. It was just amazing I was able to join the group at a later point of time and be part of it, all that music, and play with them. It’s unreal.”
Rajagopalan’s two initial shows with the band in January 2020, one in Kolkata, India and one in Singapore, proved Shakti — which first got together in 1973 and released its then-last album in 1977 — still had something to say musically. British guitarist and band leader John McLaughlin also formed the band Remember Shakti, which released studio albums in 1999, 2000 and 2001, that included several of the same members.
Inspired to keep creating but facing restrictive travel due to the pandemic, the current iteration of Shakti — McLaughlin, Rajagopalan, Hussain, percussionist V. Selvaganesh (son of Vinayakram) and singer Shankar Mahadevan — started putting together an album the way many musicians were forced to during the lockdown: piecemeal over the internet.
“I got a new perspective about music after playing with Shakti,” Rajagopalan said. “As a musician, I do a lot of collaborations and fusion music, but this was a true eye opener because the way the music came, how the composition came about, and how much everybody was contributing and everybody was [stuck] in different areas. We were in five different places and coordinated the sent music to each other.”
For the members of Shakti, it was a new form of recording from what the longtime industry veterans were used to, but the results exceeded expectations as the album, “This Moment,” was released to critical acclaim in June 2023.
To get a sense of the electric chemistry between the five band members, check out Shakti’s joyous appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk series from October. Sitting cramped in a circle, the group’s communication and creativity is on full display as they build a layered sound that truly seems to fuse Eastern and Western traditions.
“It was amazing how it all came together, but playing onstage was so different than the record because it was all spontaneous and a lot of things changed,” Rajagopalan said. “When you hear ‘Shrini’s Dream’ that came out in the album and then to hear it in the concert, it’s so different. The composition is the same, but how we played with the composition was completely different.”
The positive reaction to their album, live performances and Tiny Desk appearance was validation enough that the group was on to something, but Rajagopalan said he never dreamed that they’d snag a Grammy nod.
“It’s too much,” he said. “The moment it was announced, I didn’t believe so many people here in India would be so delighted that we would be nominated for the Grammys. The reception that we got, the emails, the phone calls, the messages, were incredible.”
Widely respected in the world of Carnatic music for his playing and composing, Rajagopalan and his brother won the 2018 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Carnatic instrumental music, the Indian equivalent of winning a Grammy Award. Rajagopalan has also branched out as a solo artist.
While waiting for the Feb. 4 Grammys ceremony, Rajagopalan has kept busy touring India in January. He’s also worked on a new song with the jazz pianist Marina Albero that is yet to be released, aptly called “Rain, Rain in Seattle.”
“It was a beautiful combination of me and her and a saxophone player, jazz musician, who actually knows a lot about Indian music, Mr. George Brooks,” Rajagopalan said. “I loved doing it.”
And come Grammy night, if Shakti wins? Rajagopalan broke into a mischievous laugh.
“Oh, it would be huge,” he said. “I think 50 years of Shakti, it has never won the Grammy, so it would be a huge feather in the cap for John and Zakir, they are the glue. Many other people have come and gone, but this is a tribute to them. That would be a great thing.”
