Education Quote by John McLaughlin

McLaughlin is doing two things at once: paying a genuine compliment and quietly defending his life’s project. As a jazz guitarist who famously dove into Indian classical music (and helped sell that fusion to Western audiences), he knows he’s walking on contested ground. So he opens with feel over theory: “funky,” “soulful,” “their own kind of blues.” That phrasing is deliberately informal, almost disarming, a way to translate an unfamiliar tradition into emotional terms a rock-and-jazz crowd can recognize. It’s also a little self-revealing: he’s mapping Indian music onto an American vernacular because that’s the bridge he has.

The pivot is the real argument: improvisation. By calling Indian classical music “the only other school on the planet” that develops improvisation at jazz’s level, he elevates it beyond “exotic influence” status and frames it as an equal partner. The subtext is credibility: fusion isn’t a gimmick or tourist sampling; it’s a meeting of two sophisticated systems with comparable rigor. He’s also staking out a specific definition of greatness in music - not harmonic complexity, not composition, but the ability to create in real time within a demanding grammar.

There’s a diplomatic edge in “common ground.” It’s an invitation and a reassurance, aimed at skeptics on both sides: jazz purists who hear dilution, and Indian traditionalists wary of flattening. McLaughlin’s intent is less to claim ownership than to justify communion, arguing that the deepest kinship isn’t sound or style, but process: disciplined freedom.