GLOBAL FUSION PIONEERS SHAKTI NOMINATED FOR TWO 2026 GRAMMY™ AWARDS
Triumphant Valedictory Album Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) Recognized in the
Best Global Music Album and Best Global Music Performance Categories
More than half a century ago, Shakti was born of the brotherly love, visionary musicianship, and spiritual synergy that existed between tabla master Zakir Hussain and virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. Fifty years later, Shakti stands as a border-defying model of global fusion, influencing generations of musicians with an East/West hybrid so fluid and intuitive that it both encapsulates and transcends its component sources – creating the polyglot genre now called World Music in the process.
The group’s 50th Anniversary Tour in 2023 found the current Shakti lineup as vital, dynamic, and ambitious as ever, with founders McLaughlin and Hussain joined by vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist Selvaganesh Vinayakram to perform selections from throughout the group’s history, including material from their 2023 studio release This Moment (their first studio album in nearly five decades), which received the 2024 GRAMMY™ award for Best Global Music Album.
Now, the audio souvenir of that tour – 2025’s Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) – has been recognized with two GRAMMY™nominations: Best Global Music Album and Best Global Music Performance for the track “Shrini’s Dream.”
The acknowledgement is bittersweet, for in December of 2024, as the material for the live album was being gathered, Zakir Hussain passed away – bringing an end to Shakti, and leaving Mind Explosion as the group’s epitaph and Hussain’s final recorded statement. “I’m thrilled, and not for the first time,” said McLaughlin upon hearing of the honor, “that the listeners have expressed such affection and enthusiasm for Shakti by nominating us again for two Grammys.”
Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) was released digitally, on CD, and as a deluxe 2LP vinyl set on July 26, 2025 by the North Carolina-based Abstract Logix label. “This landmark release is offered in tribute and celebration,” explains label owner Souvik Dutta, who conceived, produced, and helped to manage the myriad logistical intricacies of Shakti’s 2023 world tour. “I felt it deeply important to acknowledge the fifty-year legacy of John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain’s creative partnership – more akin to brotherhood than mere artistic collaborators. The magic they made together reached across cultural divides and, with joy, empathy, and curiosity as their guides, created an unprecedented new movement.”
Mind Explosion (50th Anniversary Tour Live) is the last word from Shakti – a kaleidoscopic summary of a journey spanning half a century, multiple continents, a veritable family of band members and enablers, and an unflagging commitment to dissolve boundaries, be they musical, linguistic, geographic, or political. In assessing the album’s GRAMMY™-nominated performance of “Shrini’s Dream,” All About Jazz noted that the composition was “an extended jam in honor of Mandolin Shrinivas,” then described how “sparks fly as McLaughlin solos feverishly over thunderous percussion. To great applause, Hussain and Selvaganesh solo in turn, before a konokol-cum-vocal passage culminates in soaring Mahadevan release.”
“Do not forget,” reflects McLaughlin, “that Shakti has been here since forever and will be here forever. Zakir Bhai has left us and I cannot continue without him – so ‘our’ Shakti is gone…but all it takes is love and dedication to music and ‘your’ Shakti will be born.”