Mahavishnu John McLaughlin: Desert Song
[purchase]
There might have been something in my subconscious that
directed me towards my choice this week, but it wasn’t until I had gotten a
start on this by ripping the song from the CD that the association hit me; I
had already made my decision to bring you something from Mahvishnu John
McLaughlin. You see, we are about a week away from the close of the academic
year, and although I have a handful of his albums, I was converting track 4
from “School Days” to mp3 format.
School Days is Stanley Clarke’s fourth, a “solo” album that
came out in 1976. Track 4 is called Desert Song. Here, we’ve got Stanley Clarke
playing a stand-up bass and John McLaughlin (he’s known both by his two-name
and three-name appellation) on acoustic guitar. The album (CD) credits list a
collection of string personnel, so I’m not sure who it is playing with them.
But the album is one of my all-time favorites, partly because it was the first
time I had ever heard the innovative slap-style and fretless bass and partly
because this was jazz that was funky.
The guitar work, since the focus is on the musician with the
three names, is typical “Mahavishnu” from this period: mystic and Eastern. Clarke
and McLaughlin complement each other well – in energy and speed. At about 3.20
into the song, you can hear McLaughlin take his solo. It sounds like his guitar is at once a Western and an Eastern instrument.
In the early 70s McLaughlin took Sri Chinmoy as his guru as
well as adding the spiritual name given to him by Sri Chinmoy as part of his
name. “Maha” is a prefix that exists in
several languages, including Turkish as well as Hindi, and it means “great”, ie:
Great Vishnu. McLaughlin introduced Carlos Santana to Sri Chinmoy, whence he
got the third name he, too, used for a number years in the 70s until he broke
with the guru: “Devadip” Carlos Santana. In 1973, the two of them put out the album Love Devotion Surrender that shows the influence of Sri Chinmoy on their work.