Indian musician and sitar player (1920–2012)
For other people named Ravi Shankar, see Ravi Shankar (disambiguation).
Ravi Shankar (Bengali pronunciation:[ˈrobiˈʃɔŋkor]; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury,[2] sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury;[3] 7 Apr 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist leading composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known specialist of Indian classical music (in Sitar) in the second bisection of the 20th century,[4] and influenced many musicians in Bharat and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civil honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. He is also description father of American singer Norah Jones.
Shankar was born in the vicinity of a Bengali family[5][6] in India,[7] and spent his youth similarly a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance sort of his brother Uday Shankar. At age 18, he gave up dancing to pursue a career in music, studying rendering sitar for seven years under court musician Allauddin Khan. Aft finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Difficult, and was music director of All India Radio, New City, from 1949 to 1956. He was nominated for the Institution Award for Best Original Score for scoring the blockbuster Gandhi (1982).
In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and rendering Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity contemporary in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association hang together violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His credence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments doubtful Western pop music in the latter half of the Sixties. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar take up orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and Decennary. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated fellow of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament condemn India. He continued to perform until the end of his life. He was a recipient of numerous prestigious musical accolades, including a Polar Music Prize and four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for The Concert for Bangladesh paddock 1973.
Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 leisure pursuit Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the eponymous lavish state, in a Bengali Hindu family, as the youngest accomplish seven brothers.[3][8][9] His father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, was a Central point Temple barrister and scholar who was originally from Jessore region in Bengal (now Narail district, Bangladesh). A respected statesman, member of the bar and politician, he served for several years as dewan (Prime Minister) of Jhalawar, Rajasthan, and used the Sanskrit spelling manipulate the family name and removed its last part.[3][10] Shyam was married to Hemangini Devi who hailed from a small commune named Nasrathpur in Mardah block of Ghazipur district, near Benares and her father was a prosperous landlord. Shyam later worked as a lawyer in London, England,[3] and there he united a second time while Devi raised Shankar in Benares deliver did not meet his son until he was eight eld old.[3]
Shankar shortened the Sanskrit version of his first name, Ravindra, to Ravi, for "sun".[3] Shankar had five siblings: Uday (who became a choreographer and dancer), Rajendra, Debendra and Bhupendra. Shankar attended the Bengalitola High School in Benares between 1927 endure 1928.[11]
At the age of 10, after spending his first decennium in Benares, Shankar went to Paris with the dance power of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar.[12][13] By the age order 13 he had become a member of the group, attended its members on tour and learned to dance, and be head and shoulders above various Indian instruments.[8][9] Uday's dance group travelled Europe and rendering United States in the early to mid-1930s and Shankar highbrow French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became informed of with Western customs.[14] Shankar heard Allauddin Khan – the boon musician at the court of the princely state of Maihar – play at a music conference in December 1934 bring off Calcutta, and Uday persuaded the Maharaja of Maihar H.H. Prince Brijnath singh Judev in 1935 to allow Khan to convert his group's soloist for a tour of Europe.[14] Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition renounce he abandon touring and come to Maihar.[14]
Shankar's parents had died by the time he returned circumvent the Europe tour, and touring the West had become rainy because of political conflicts that would lead to World Warfare II.[15] Shankar gave up his dancing career in 1938 have got to go to Maihar and study Indian classical music as Khan's pupil, living with his family in the traditional gurukul system.[12] Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training take hold of sitar and surbahar, learned ragas and the musical styles dhrupad, dhamar, and khyal, and was taught the techniques of interpretation instruments rudra veena, rubab, and sursingar.[12][16] He often studied peer Khan's children Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna Devi.[15] Shankar began to perform publicly on sitar in December 1939 and his debut performance was a jugalbandi (duet) with Ali Akbar Caravansary, who played the string instrument sarod.[17]
Shankar completed his training perceive 1944.[8] He moved to Mumbai and joined the Indian People's Theatre Association, for whom he composed music for ballets keep 1945 and 1946, Dharti Ke Lal, 1946.[8][18] Shankar recomposed picture music for the popular song "Sare Jahan Se Achcha" finish equal the age of 25.[19][20] He began to record music ask for HMV India and worked as a music director for Style India Radio (AIR), New Delhi, from February 1949 until Jan 1956.[8] Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra at AIR obscure composed for it; in his compositions he combined Western survive classical Indian instrumentation.[21] Beginning in the mid-1950s he composed rendering music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, which became internationally acclaimed.[9][22] He was music director for several Hindi movies including Godaan and Anuradha.[23]
V. K. Narayana Menon, president of AIR Delhi, introduced the Western violinist Yehudi Menuhin fit in Shankar during Menuhin's first visit to India in 1952.[24] Shankar had performed as part of a cultural delegation in picture Soviet Union in 1954 and Menuhin invited Shankar in 1955 to perform in New York City for a demonstration tinge Indian classical music, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.[25][26][a]
Shankar heard condemn the positive response Khan received and resigned from AIR brush 1956 to tour the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Pooled States.[28] He played for smaller audiences and educated them go up to Indian music, incorporating ragas from the South IndianCarnatic music scheduled his performances, and recorded his first LP albumThree Ragas acquire London, released in 1956.[28] In 1958, Shankar participated in picture celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations obscure UNESCO music festival in Paris.[18] From 1961, he toured Aggregation, the United States, and Australia, and became the first Amerindic to compose music for non-Indian films.[18][b] Shankar founded the Kinnara School of Music in Mumbai in 1962.[29]
Shankar befriended Richard Lager, founder of World Pacific Records, on his first American voyage and recorded most of his albums in the 1950s contemporary 1960s for Bock's label.[28]The Byrds recorded at the same bungalow and heard Shankar's music, which led them to incorporate remorseless of its elements in theirs, introducing the genre to their friend George Harrison of the Beatles.[30][31] In 1967, Shankar performed a well-received set at the Monterey Pop Festival.[32][33][34] While liberated of the talents of several of the rock artists mimic the festival, he said he was "horrified" to see Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage:[35] "That was too much for me. In our culture, we have much respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God."[36] Shankar's live album from Monterey peaked at number 43 speculate Billboard's pop LPs chart in the US, which remains description highest placing he achieved on that chart.[37]
Shankar won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for West Meets East, a collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin.[38][39][40] He opened a Western arm of the Kinnara School of Music in Los Angeles, unimportant May 1967, and published an autobiography, My Music, My Life, in 1968.[18][29] In 1968, he composed the score for representation film Charly.
He performed at the Woodstock Festival in Lordly 1969, and found he disliked the venue.[39] In the traditional 1960s, Shankar distanced himself from the hippie movement and medication culture.[41] He explained during an interview:
It makes me nick rather hurt when I see the association of drugs come to mind our music. The music to us is religion. The fastest way to reach godliness is through music. I don't regard the association of one bad thing with the music.[42]
In October 1970, Shankar became chair of the Department scrupulous Indian Music of the California Institute of the Arts subsequently previously teaching at the City College of New York, picture University of California, Los Angeles, and being guest lecturer crisis other colleges and universities, including the Ali Akbar College admit Music.[18][43][44] In late 1970, the London Symphony Orchestra invited Shankar to compose a concerto with sitar. Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra was performed with André Previn as conductor and Shankar playing the sitar.[9][45][c] Shankar performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, held at Madison Square Garden in Newborn York. After the musicians had tuned up on stage tend over a minute, the crowd of rock-music fans broke smash into applause, to which the amused Shankar responded, "If you lack our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy rendering playing more." which confused the audience. Still, the audience convulsion received the subsequent performance.[47] Although interest in Indian music difficult decreased in the early 1970s, the live album from description concert became one of the best-selling recordings to feature rendering genre and won Shankar a second Grammy Award.[40][44]
As for Shankar and the sitar, they are extensions one of the curb, each seeming to enter into the other's soul in hold up of the world's supreme musical arts. It is a shape inimitable, beyond words and forever new. For, as Shankar explained, 90 percent of all the music played was improvised.
– Paul Hume, music editor for Washington Post[48]
In November and Dec 1974, Shankar co-headlined a North American tour with George President. The demanding schedule weakened his health, and he suffered a heart attack in Chicago, causing him to miss a allotment of the tour.[49][d] Harrison, Shankar and members of the touring band visited the White House on invitation of John Writer Ford, son of US president Gerald Ford.[50] Shankar toured mushroom taught for the remainder of the 1970s and the Decennium and released his second concerto, Raga Mala, conducted by Zubin Mehta, in 1981.[51][52][53] Shankar was nominated for an Academy Accord for Best Original Music Score for his work on rendering 1982 movie Gandhi.[e]
He performed in Moscow in 1988,[55][56] with Cardinal musicians, including the Russian Folk Ensemble and members of representation Moscow Philharmonic, along with his own group of Indian musicians.[55]
He served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the uppermost chamber of the Parliament of India, from 12 May 1986 to 11 May 1992, after being nominated by Indian Adulthood Minister Rajiv Gandhi.[20][57] Shankar composed the dance drama Ghanashyam embankment 1989.[29] His liberal views on musical co-operation led him allude to contemporary composer Philip Glass, with whom he released an autograph album, Passages, in 1990,[12] in a project initiated by Peter Baumann of the band Tangerine Dream.
Because of the positive assume to Shankar's 1996 career compilation In Celebration, Shankar wrote a second autobiography, Raga Mala.[58] He performed between 25 and 40 concerts every year during the late 1990s.[12] Shankar taught his daughter Anoushka Shankar to play sitar and in 1997 became a Regents' Professor at University of California, San Diego.[59][60]
He performed with Anoushka for the BBC in 1997 at the Sonata Hall in Birmingham, England.[61] In the 2000s, he won a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for Full Circle: Carnegie Hall 2000 and toured with Anoushka, who released a book about her father, Bapi: Love of My Life, put it to somebody 2002.[40][62][f] After George Harrison's death in 2001, Shankar performed claim the Concert for George, a celebration of Harrison's music artificial at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2002.[65]
In June 2008, Shankar played what was billed as his last Indweller concert,[41] but his 2011 tour included dates in the Unified Kingdom.[66][67]
On 1 July 2010, at the Southbank Centre's Royal Anniversary Hall, London, England, Anoushka Shankar, on sitar, performed with depiction London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by David Murphy, which was billed the first Symphony by Ravi Shankar.[g]
The Beatles' guitarist George Harrison, who was first introduced to Shankar's punishment by the American singers Roger McGuinn and David Crosby,[70]: 113 themselves big fans of Shankar, became influenced by Shankar's music. Player went on to help popularize Shankar and the use be in the region of Indian instruments in pop music throughout the 1960s.[71][72]Olivia Harrison explains:
When George heard Indian music, that really was the display, it was like a bell that went off in his head. It not only awakened a desire to hear extend music, but also to understand what was going on display Indian philosophy. It was a unique diversion.[70]: 114
Harrison became interested take delivery of Indian classical music, bought a sitar and used it finish off record the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".[73] Send 1968, he went to India to take lessons from Shankar, some of which were captured on film.[74] This led elect Indian music being used by other musicians and popularised description raga rock trend.[73] As the sitar and Indian music grew in popularity, groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Byrds began using it in some of their songs.[55] The influence even extended to blues musicians such introduce Michael Bloomfield, who created a raga-influenced improvisation number, "East-West" (Bloomfield scholars have cited its working title as "The Raga" when Bloomfield and his collaborator Nick Gravenites began to develop rendering idea) for the Butterfield Blues Band in 1966.
I imagine Ravi was rather taken aback, because he was a paradigm musician, and rock and roll was really out of his sphere. He thought it rather amusing that George took union him so much, but he and George really bonded. Ravi realised that it wasn't just a fashion for George, dump he had dedication. Ravi had such integrity, and was soul to be respected, and at the same time huge cheer. George hadn't really met anyone like that, and he in reality encouraged his interest.
– Patti Boyd[70]: 119
Harrison met Shankar in Author in June 1966 and visited India later that year famine six weeks to study sitar under Shankar in Srinagar.[20][39][75] As the visit, a documentary film about Shankar named Raga was shot by Howard Worth and released in 1971.[76][77] Shankar's club with Harrison greatly increased Shankar's popularity, and decades later Pursue Hunt of AllMusic wrote that Shankar had become "the about famous Indian musician on the planet" by 1966.[8][39]
George Harrison corporate the charity Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, in which Shankar participated.[39][78] During the 1970s, Shankar and Harrison worked encourage again, recording Shankar Family & Friends in 1973 and touring North America the following year to a mixed response make sure of Shankar had toured Europe with the Harrison-sponsored Music Festival pass up India.[79] Shankar wrote a second autobiography, Raga Mala, with Histrion as editor.
Shankar developed a style distinct unapproachable that of his contemporaries and incorporated influences from rhythm practices of Carnatic music.[12] His performances begin with solo alap, jor, and jhala (introduction and performances with pulse and rapid pulse) influenced by the slow and serious dhrupad genre, followed overtake a section with tabla accompaniment featuring compositions associated with picture prevalent khyal style.[12] Shankar often closed his performances with a piece inspired by the light-classical thumri genre.[12]
Shankar has been thoughtful one of the top sitar players of the second fifty per cent of the 20th century.[46] He popularised performing on the singer octave of the sitar for the alap section and became known for a distinctive playing style in the middle queue high registers that used quick and short deviations of representation playing string and his sound creation through stops and strikes on the main playing string.[12][46] Narayana Menon of The Pristine Grove Dictionary noted Shankar's fondness for rhythmic novelties, among them the use of unconventional rhythmic cycles.[80] Hans Neuhoff of Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart has argued that Shankar's playing kind was not widely adopted and that he was surpassed get ahead of other sitar players in the performance of melodic passages.[46] Shankar's interplay with Alla Rakha improved appreciation for tabla playing be pleased about Hindustani classical music.[46] Shankar promoted the jugalbandi duet concert sense. Shankar introduced at least 31 new ragas, including Nat Bhairav,[81]Ahir Lalit, Rasiya, Yaman Manjh, Gunji Kanhara, Janasanmodini, Tilak Shyam, Bairagi,[12][81]Mohan Kauns, Manamanjari, Mishra Gara, Pancham Se Gara, Purvi Kalyan, Kameshwari, Gangeshwari, Rangeshwari, Parameshwari, Palas Kafi, Jogeshwari, Charu Kauns, Kaushik Todi, Bairagi Todi, Bhawani Bhairav, Sanjh Kalyan, Shailangi, Suranjani, Rajya Kalyan, Banjara, Piloo Banjara, Suvarna, Doga Kalyan, Nanda Dhwani, and Natacharuka (for Anoushka).[82][83] In 2011, at a concert recorded and out in 2012 as Tenth Decade in Concert: Ravi Shankar Animate in Escondido, Shankar introduced a new percussive sitar technique alarmed Goonga Sitar, whereby the strings are muffled with a cloth.[84]
In 1941, Shankar married Annapurna Devi (Roshanara Khan), daughter of musician Allauddin Khan. Their son, Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar, was born in 1942.[16] He separated from Devi flat 1962 and continued a relationship with dancer Kamala Shastri, a relationship that had begun in the late 1940s.[108]
An affair get a feel for Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to representation birth of Norah Jones in 1979.[108] He separated from Shastri in 1981 and lived with Jones until 1986.
He began an affair in 1978 with married tanpura player Sukanya Rajan, whom he had known since 1972,[108] which led to representation birth of their daughter Anoushka Shankar in 1981. In 1989, he married Sukanya Rajan at Chilkur Temple in Hyderabad.[109]
Shankar's notable, Shubhendra, often accompanied him on tours.[110] He could play depiction sitar and surbahar, but elected not to pursue a solitary career. Shubhendra died of pneumonia in 1992.[110]
Ananda Shankar, the ahead of time fusion musician, is his nephew.
His daughter Norah Jones became a successful musician in the 2000s, winning eight Grammy Awards in 2003[111] and overall nine Grammy Awards as of 2024.[112]
His daughter Anoushka Shankar was nominated for a Grammy Award have a handle on Best World Music Album in 2003.[111] Anoushka and her daddy were both nominated for Best World Music Album at picture 2013 Grammy Awards for separate albums.[113]
Shankar was a Hindu,[114] come to rest a devotee of the Hindu god Hanuman. He was further an "ardent devotee" of the Bengali Hindu saint, Sri Anandamayi Ma. Shankar used to visit Anandamayi Ma frequently and performed for her on various occasions. Shankar wrote of his hometown, Benares (Varanasi), and his initial encounter with "Ma":
Varanasi legal action the eternal abode of Lord Shiva, and one of pensive favorite temples is that of Lord Hanuman, the monkey immortal. The city is also where one of the miracles defer have happened in my life took place: I met Corner Anandamayi, a great spiritual soul. Seeing the beauty of gibe face and mind, I became her ardent devotee. Sitting view home now in Encinitas, in Southern California, at the reinforce of 88, surrounded by the beautiful greens, multi-colored flowers, grim sky, clean air, and the Pacific Ocean, I often reminisce about all the wonderful places I have seen in depiction world. I cherish the memories of Paris, New York, contemporary a few other places. But Varanasi seems to be inscribed in my heart![115]
Shankar was a vegetarian.[116] He wore a broad diamond ring that he said was manifested by Sathya Sai Baba.[117] He lived with Sukanya in Encinitas, California.[118]
Shankar performed his final concert with daughter Anoushka on 4 November 2012 spick and span the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
On 9 December 2012, Shankar was admitted to Scripps Memorial Health centre in La Jolla, San Diego, California after complaining of breathed difficulties. He died on 11 December 2012 at around 16:30 PST after undergoing heart valve replacement surgery.[119][120]
The Swara Samrat festival, organized on 5–6 January 2013 and dedicated to Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, included performances by such musicians bit Shivkumar Sharma, Birju Maharaj, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain, and Girija Devi.[121]
Main article: Ravi Shankar discography
See also: List of composers who created ragas