John McLaughlin, after some time away from Shakti’s music, had just put on Mind Explosion at home and started playing the tune Shrini’s Dream when his phone rang. It was percussion virtuoso Selvaganesh Vinayakram, who said: “John-ji, do you know, Shakti has been nominated for Shrini’s Dream?”
That is how the British jazz guitar legend learnt about the Grammy nominations for his final album with his musical brother across continents and cultures, the late tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain.
The 68th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be held on 1 February, 2026 in Los Angeles. The nominations were announced on 7 November.
Mind Explosion has been nominated for Best Global Music Album and the track Shrini’s Dream for Best Global Music Performance in the Grammy Awards.
“This song is about an angel who came from heaven to play music for us for just a little while,” Hussain says in his tender eulogy in the album for the late mandolin prodigy U. Shrinivas, who also played with Shakti, on Shrini’s Dream.
“I called John-ji just a while ago to congratulate him on two Grammy nominations for Shakti — he was absolutely thrilled,” Kolkata native Souvik Dutta, who has managed the band and helped craft their 50th anniversary tour and album, told The Telegraph Online.
“Everyone is so happy and grateful, but today, all we can think about is Zakir Bhai and Mandolin Shrinivas,” Souvik said. “This is really for them — and how much they would have loved to be here, but you know they are here.”
McLaughlin and Hussain’s friendship that began in 1969 changed the course of global music, smashed open the doors of the West for Indian music and musicians, and of fusion music to the globe. Mind Explosion is the swan song of Shakti, the musical institution of a band that began when the two first jammed in the living room of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in California.
Shakti recorded This Moment — their first studio album in nearly 50 years that won the band their first Grammy Award, for Best Global Music Album, in 2024 — just before embarking on their world tour in 2023.
Their final release, Mind Explosion (Abstract Logix, 2025), is the official live album from that tour by these fusion pioneers. It is also the last live document featuring Ustad Zakir Hussain. The album features the final Shakti line-up: McLaughlin (guitar, guitar synth), Hussain (tabla), vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and Selvaganesh.
Mind Explosion has connections to Kolkata apart from Souvik. The creative duo Orko Basu and Urmi Bhanja worked on the album cover and a book of photos and stories which accompanied the vinyl in the collector’s edition.
