Oct 28, 2025 10:47 AM
In Memoriam: Jack DeJohnette, 1942–2025
Jack DeJohnette, a bold and resourceful drummer and NEA Jazz Master who forged a unique vocabulary on the kit over his…
Souvik Dutta calls Abstract Logix his side hustle, one that allows him to work with some of the greatest fusion artists in the world.
(Photo: Courtesy Souvik Dutta)Growing up in Calcutta, Souvik Dutta had the usual exposure to Indian classical music in his home. “From the time I was 2 years old, I was hearing Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Vilayat Khan and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,” the founder and proprietor of Abstract Logix recalled by phone during a recent trip back home to visit his 88-year-old father. By the late ’80s, rock music consumed him. “It was very, very big for me as a teenager,” he said. “I was into the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. I was also the biggest Black Sabbath fan.”
By 1989, Dutta was playing bass in a local rock band that covered Deep Purple tunes, among other pop songs of the day. It was seeing a video at a friend’s house later that year of Joni Mitchell’s Shadows and Light tour, with Jaco Pastorius on bass, that provided him with a reality check. “I became the biggest Jaco fan, but my dad said, ‘Maybe you ought to do something else? Because if you’re not as good as this guy, then why do it?’ So that’s when I decided, ‘I’m not gonna try to be a bass player anymore.’”
Still, music was in his heart. By 1991, he convinced his parents to send him abroad to attend Wesleyan College in North Carolina, but he had ulterior motives. “I had to coerce my dad and my mom to take a significant part of their savings and send me to America. And I was a decent student, but I didn’t come here to go to college. I came here to see the music that I loved.”
He ended up taking a year-and-a-half off school after his sophomore year to hit the road with the Grateful Dead (right before Jerry Garcia died) as a real Deadhead on their cross-country tours. After returning to school, receiving his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan and later his master’s from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, he began working as an IT specialist at IBM while maintaining his love of music through records and by seeing concerts at night.
Dutta’s entrance into the curatorial realm of music happened quite organically. “The first major turning point came in early 2002,” he recalled. “I was a big fan of the bassist Jonas Hellborg, who was in an early ’80s edition of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Jonas had done a string of trio recordings that I loved with the great guitarist Shawn Lane and the drummer Jeff Sipe, which I think musically is one of the most important trios ever. They were doing a little tour of the Carolinas and the Virginias at the time, and I had this crazy-ass idea of reaching out to Hellborg.”
It paid off.
“So I called Jonas up out of the blue and said, ‘What would it take for you to play a private party for about 30 to 40 friends who love music?’ He gave me the terms and added, ‘Figure out a way to broadcast the show.’ Since we were all techies, me and a couple of friends figured out how to put up a website, then I had to come up with a name for it. So I thought of an album that Jonas and Shawn did in 1995 called Abstract Logic. I always loved that name. Abstraction is a really interest ing concept in engineering that deals with break ing down the whole idea into smaller ideas. And I turned the ‘c’ in logic into an ‘x’, because ‘x’ goes with extreme programming, which I used to do at the time. So that was the kind of funky name I came up with that had no real reason behind it. And it was really just a one-page website that was only meant to broadcast that show on April 29, 2002, with Shawn, Jonas and Jeff playing in my living room in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
That single event established the presence of Dutta’s website/blog. It wasn’t until 2005 that Abstract Logix morphed into a bona fide record label when he released Project Z’s Lincoln Project featuring Aquarium Rescue Unit guitarist Jimmy Herring joined by bassist Ricky Keller, drummer Jeff Sipe and guests Greg Osby on alto sax and Jason Crosby on keyboards. [Full disclosure: I did the liner notes for that very first Abstract Logix release].
Along the way, Dutta also established a working relationship that developed into a lasting friendship with guitar hero John McLaughlin, beginning with the release of a 2007 instructional video titled The Gateway to Rhythm on Abstract Logix. It continued with a succession of McLaughlin releases on Dutta’s label, including Shakti’s latest album, 2025’s Mind Explosion, dedicated to the late tabla master Zakir Hussain.
“I never thought I’d make a career in music or have a record label or even go to America,” said Dutta. “Imagine starting out working the merch table on the road with Shakti in 2003 to distributing John’s records through my website to becoming his tour manager, then his manager. It’s beyond my wildest dreams. And John is a mentor to me. My wife, Shweta, and I hold John and his wife, Ina, very dearly. He never fails to come to our home in the Carolinas during American tours. During the last Shakti tour of India, my father got to meet him, which was so wonderful. Truly special.”
And while he has remained at IBM for 23 years now, Dutta continues to keep his passion for music alive through Abstract Logix. “The label has always been my side hustle,” he maintains. “I have a lot of financial responsibilities in life. I have to support a lot people in my life; a lot poor people in India that were very, very loyal to me and my family. So I had to keep that IBM job, man. There are a lot mouths I was quietly feeding. And I’m still doing it. But I wouldn’t be able to do it strictly from the music business side of things. And besides, music is fun.” DB
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