Pandit Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Ravindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he was, together with sarod virtuoso Ali Akbar Khan, among the most prominent exponents of Hindustani classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and played a major role in bringing Indian classical music to international audiences. Shankar influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. He was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. He is also the father of American singer Norah Jones and British-American musician and sitar player Anoushka Shankar.
Shankar was born to a Bengali family in India, and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. At age 18, he gave up dancing to pursue a career in music, studying the sitar for seven years under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.
In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and America, playing Indian classical music. He increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra and touring the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of 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 in 1973, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for scoring the blockbuster Gandhi (1982).
Early life Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Benares (now Varanasi), then the capital of the princely state of the same name, in a Bengali Hindu family, as the youngest of seven brothers.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 48.Massey 1996, p. 159. His father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, was a Middle Temple barrister and scholar who was from Narail district of modern-day Bangladesh (then Jessore district in Bengal, British India). A statesman, lawyer, and politician, he served for several years as dewan (Prime Minister) of Jhalawar State, Rajasthan, and used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed its last part.Ghosh 1983, p. 7. Shyam was married to Hemangini Devi, who hailed from a small village 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, and there he married a second time while Devi raised Shankar in Benares, and he did not meet his son until he was eight years old.
Shankar shortened the Sanskrit version of his first name, Ravindra, to Ravi, for "sun". 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 and 1928.
At the age of 10, after spending his first decade in Benares, Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar.Slawek 2001, pp. 202–203.Ghosh 1983, p. 55. By the age of 13 he had become a member of the group, accompanied its members on tour and learned to dance, and play various Indian instruments. Uday's dance group travelled Europe and the United States in the early to mid-1930s and Shankar learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became acquainted with Western customs.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 50. Shankar heard Allauddin Khan – the lead musician at the court of the princely state of Maihar – play at a music conference in December 1934 in Calcutta, and Uday persuaded the Maharaja of Maihar H.H. Maharaja Brijnath Singh Judev in 1935 to allow Khan to become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe. Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition that he abandon touring and come to Maihar.
Career
Musical training and work in India Shankar's parents had died by the time he returned from the European tour, and touring the West had become difficult because of political conflicts that would lead to World War II.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 51. In 1938, Shankar decided to leave his dancing career to study Indian classical music under the tutelage of Khan in Maihar. He lived with Khan’s family as part of the traditional gurukul system. Khan was a strict teacher, and during his training, Shankar learned to play the sitar and surbahar. He also studied various ragas and musical styles, including dhrupad, dhamar, and khyal, and received instruction on instruments such as the rudra veena, rubab, and sursingar.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 52. He often studied with Khan's children Ali Akbar Khan and Annapurna Devi. Shankar made his public debut on the sitar in December 1939, performing a jugalbandi (duet) with Ali Akbar Khan, who played the string instrument sarod.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 53.
Shankar completed his musical training in 1944. He then moved to Mumbai and joined the Indian People's Theatre Association, for whom he composed music for ballets in 1945 and 1946, Dharti Ke Lal, 1946.Ghosh 1983, p. 57. Shankar recomposed the music for the popular song "Sare Jahan Se Achcha" at the age of 25.Sharma 2007, pp. 163–164. He began to record music for His Master's Voice and worked as a music director for All India Radio (AIR), New Delhi, from February 1949 until January 1956. Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra at AIR and composed for it; in his compositions he combined Western and classical Indian instrumentation.Lavezzoli 2Ravi ShankarRavi ShankarRavi Shankar006, p. 56. Beginning in the mid-1950s he composed the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, which became internationally acclaimed. He was music director for several Hindi movies including Godaan and Anuradha.
1956–1969 International performances
V. K. Narayana Menon, director of AIR Delhi, introduced the Western violinist Yehudi Menuhin to Shankar during Menuhin's first visit to India in 1952.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 47. Shankar had performed as part of a cultural delegation in the Soviet Union in 1954 and Menuhin invited Shankar in 1955 to perform in New York City for a demonstration of Indian classical music, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 57.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 58.
Shankar heard about the positive response Khan received and resigned from AIR in 1956 to tour the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 61. He played for smaller audiences and educated them about Indian music, incorporating ragas from the South Indian Carnatic music in his performances, and recorded his first LP album Three Ragas in London, released in 1956. In 1958, Shankar participated in the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations and UNESCO music festival in Paris. From 1961, he toured Europe, the United States, and Australia, and became the first Indian to compose music for non-Indian films. Shankar founded the Kinnara School of Music in Mumbai in 1962.Brockhaus, p. 199.
Shankar befriended Richard Bock, founder of World Pacific Records, on his first American tour and recorded most of his albums in the 1950s and 1960s for Bock's label. The Byrds recorded at the same studio and heard Shankar's music, which led them to incorporate some of its elements in theirs, introducing the genre to their friend George Harrison of the Beatles.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 62. In 1967, Shankar performed a well-received set at the Monterey Pop Festival.Ravi Shankar performing at the Monterey Pop (June 1967) , 18 min. While complimentary of the talents of several of the rock artists at the festival, he said he was "horrified" to see Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage:video: "Jimi Hendrix Sets Guitar On Fire at Monterey Pop Festival, 1967" "That was too much for me. In our culture, we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God.""Ravi Shankar, Indian sitar maestro, dies" , BBC, 12 December 2012. Shankar's live album from Monterey peaked at number 43 on Billboards pop LPs chart in the US, which remains the highest placing he achieved on that chart.
Shankar won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for West Meets East, a collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin. He opened a Western branch of the Kinnara School of Music in Los Angeles, in May 1967, and published an autobiography, My Music, My Life, in 1968. In 1968, he composed the score for the film Charly.
He performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, and found he disliked the venue. In the late 1960s, Shankar distanced himself from the hippie movement and drug culture. He explained during an interview:
1970–2012: International performances In October 1970, Shankar became chair of the Department of Indian Music of the California Institute of the Arts after previously teaching at the City College of New York, the University of California, Los Angeles, and being guest lecturer at other colleges and universities, including the Ali Akbar College of Music.Ghosh 1983, p. 56. 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.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 221. Shankar performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, held at Madison Square Garden in New York. After the musicians had tuned up on stage for over a minute, the crowd of rock-music fans broke into applause, to which the amused Shankar responded, "If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more," which confused the audience. Still, the audience received the subsequent performance well. Although interest in Indian music had decreased in the early 1970s, the live album from the concert became one of the best-selling recordings to feature the genre and won Shankar a second Grammy Award.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 66.
In November and December 1974, Shankar co-headlined a North American tour with George Harrison. The demanding schedule weakened his health, and he suffered a heart attack in Chicago, causing him to miss a portion of the tour.Lavezzoli 2006, pp. 195–96. Harrison, Shankar and members of the touring band visited the White House on invitation of John Gardner Ford, son of US president Gerald Ford. Shankar toured and taught for the remainder of the 1970s and the 1980s and released his second concerto, Raga Mala, conducted by Zubin Mehta, in 1981.Lavezzoli 2006, p. 222. Shankar was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for his work on the 1982 movie Gandhi.
He performed in Moscow in 1988, with 140 musicians, including the Russian Folk Ensemble and members of the Moscow Philharmonic, along with his own group of Indian musicians.
He served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India, from 12 May 1986 to 11 May 1992, after being nominated by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Shankar composed the dance drama Ghanashyam in 1989. His liberal views on musical co-operation led him to contemporary composer Philip Glass, with whom he released an album, Passages, in 1990, in a project initiated by Peter Baumann of the band Tangerine Dream.