A John McLaughlin composition, it is an interesting choice of subject matter. "Niyati" means what is prescribed or predestined and appears throughout the Bhagavad-Gita to enforce a sense of duty.

niyatam kuru karma tvam karma jyãpo hy akarmanah sarîra-yãtrãpi ca te na prasiddhyed akarmanah

Perform your prescribed duty, for doing so is better than not working. One cannot even maintain one's physical body without work.

A positive corollary is that if duties are carried out without motive for gain but performed in Krishna consciousness for the satisfaction of the Supreme, then they are good actions. However, Gandhi was not alone in realising that misusing this facet of Dharma leads to oppression (especially of the Harijan community) and reinforces an outdated and immoral cast system. I wonder what Shankar Mahadevan is singing about and whether these elements are touched.

The music is a showcase for quite a range of musicianship. The flageolet tones of Kalakantha Shankar Mahadevan (the one with the sweet voice) is the adhesive in the slow opening passage that binds together drone, guitar, mandolin, slide guitar, tabla and percussion. Soon a four note emergent upsurge in the melodic line rifles a staccato bridge from JM into another calm patch punctuated by a rising four note crescendo married with a descending four notes. The motif proper now begins; a full twenty-one note modal phrase that snakes its way no less than three times back up-scale. Guitar and slide guitar shadow each other a little longer before Sivamani settles into a cleverly disguised lolloping backbeat that morphs its way between beats to accomodate the tala rhythmic cycle. Shankar Mahadevan completes the first ten minute section of the piece with a crowd pleasing gush.

Highlights in the middle section of Niyati include what sounds like an astonishingly complex yet humorous duet on Vikku Vinayakram's mridangam and son V.Selvaganesh's kanjira, a tabla and sliding guitar-led andante through to allegretto passage plus a ball-busting, skins warping thrash of just about every persussion instrument he has available to him by Sivamani. At last this is his chance to stretch out and Sivamani grasps the opportunity with all the hands of Shiva, his bass drum volleys perhaps a surprising success with the Bombay audience, even eliciting call-and-response participation. Swara vocalisations (suspected to be Vikku Vinayakram) interspersed with a brilliantly trademark-funny mridangam solo are highly entertaining as is Zakir Hussain's note bending which, as usual, defies belief.

The final ten minutes are an exciting raga funk building to incorporate the entire augmented rhythm section, the amplified mandolin and guitar arching above the thunder to reiterate the melody in unison before further trade ensues between tabla, mridangam and drums. Another Musikalischer Spass created by a cliff-edge halt to the tempo is met with howls of laughter before a cornucopia of fragmented rhythm takes us to a climactic drum panoply and the terminal unison chorus.