John McLaughlin and Shakti (from 1974)

John McLaughlin and Shakti

John Mc Laughlin was in India a couple of weeks ago and the news made me feel nostalgic for the seventies... This piece from 1974 that I found at Youtube is the best tribute I can pay to John and Shakti.

As a viewer there puts it "Incredible! This brings back memories. I saw Shakti around 1976 or 1977. They played on campus at UC San Diego and blew away the crowd. The thing I remember most was John McLaughlin getting a standing ovation just for tuning up his guitar."

And if you click here you can see the many pieces on Shakti and McLaughlin available at Youtube.

The Man Asian Literary Prize 2007

An interesting email I received from Muse India has this to say about a literary Prize:

The Man Asian Literary Prize 2007

The first Man Asian Literary Prize will be awarded in the Autumn of 2007 for an “Asian novel unpublished in English” and each twelve months thereafter. The objectives of creating the Asian Literary Prize are:

To bring exciting new Asian authors to the attention of the world literary community

To facilitate publishing and translation of Asian literature in and into English.

To highlight Asia’s developing role in World literature.

The Prize was initiated by the Hong Kong International Literary Festival Ltd. with financial support from Man Group Plc.


Submissions will be accepted electronically online from 1 Nov, 2006 to 31 Mar, 2007. For details and to submit works, please see

www.manasianliteraryprize.org

The Prize is worth $10,000 with an additional $3000 for the translator.
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Worth taking a look?

Incidentally the Nov-Dec 2006 issue of Muse India is devoted to writing from Kerala.
Click here to get to it.