Sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar has done a great deal to popularise Indian music in the West. Known for his charisma and enthusiasm as a performer, and for his association with Western classical musicians and pop stars, Shankar is the quintessential Indian musician for the West.
Born in Uttar Pradesh, India, on April 7, 1920, the young Shankar showed extraordinary early promise as a musician and dancer. His cosmopolitan life began when, as a boy, he went to live with his older brother Uday and his dance troupe in Paris, but in his late teens he decided to return to India to study classical Indian music. This involved many years of disciplined study with Ustad Allauddin Khan, who became both his musical and spiritual teacher, and later his father-in-law. Shankar chose to study one of the classical Indian instruments, the 17-plus-stringed, plucked sitar, and had to learn the complex system of ragas (melodic patterns) and talas (rhythmic patterns) that provide the basis for classical Indian music.
Shankar’s debut concerts in the mid-1940s were widely acclaimed in India and he became a central figure in the musical life of the country. In 1949 Shankar became director of music for All-India Radio and remained in the post until 1956. He composed for films, including Satayajit Ray’s Apu trilogy in the mid-1950s. He also composed the music for ballets, including Immortal India, Discovery of India (1944), based on a book by the first prime minister of India, Pandit Nehru, as well as Samanya Kshati (1961) and Chanadalika (1962), both based on texts by the famous Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore.
In the mid-1950s, Shankar left for a tour of Europe and the U.S. He played for a UNESCO concert in Paris (1958), and later performed at the United Nations Human Rights Day concert in New York (1967), where he played a duet with classical violinist Yehudi MENUHIN. In 1966, George Harrison briefly became his pupil and began incorporating the sitar on the BEATLES’ experimental albums (for example, in the song “Norwegian Wood” from the album Rubber Soul, 1965). This pop connection made Shankar a hippy superstar, and he appeared with Harrison at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and in two fund-raising concerts to benefit Bangladesh. “I was happy that I could reach the young people so quickly,” he said “but the unfortunate side was that it was very superficial.” Shankar himself came under some criticism from classical Indian purists, who accused him of sacrilege and having harmed Indian music by this exposure to the West. From then he gradually withdrew from the pop scene.
Shankar continued to be associated with an eclectic group of musicians, from jazz to classical: among his many students and collaborators were John COLTRANE, just prior to the jazz saxophonist’s premature death; minimalist composer Philip GLASS; and fellow countryman and conductor Zubin MEHTA.
Shankar continued these activities, including classical concerts with Ali Akbar Khan and others, through the 1970s to the 1990s, despite heart problems that led to bypass surgery in 1986. In 1981, his daughter, Anoushka, was born to his second wife, Sukanya, and the family divided their time between their homes in California and New Delhi.
Shankar founded a school of Indian music in Los Angeles, and has taught privately and at institutions. He taught his daughter, Anoushka, who participated on sitar in some of the concerts honouring her father’s 75th birthday, in 1995. He remains a spiritually attuned, humble, and influential musician.
Jeff Kaliss
SEE ALSO:
MEHTA, ZUBIN; RAGGA; SOUTH ASIA.
Shankar, Ravi. Drops of Light: Discourses in Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA: Art of Living Foundation, 1990);
Shankar, Ravi. Learning Indian Music: A Systematic Approach (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Onomatopoeia, 1979).
Raga Charukauns; Raga Jogeshwari-, Philip Glass: Passages.