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Ravi
Shankar's achievements in the Indian music firmament are matched only
by his international influence. Famed as the man who popularized Indian
music in the West, his life has been devoted to mutual exchange and
enlightenment between all nations of the world. George Harrison dubs
him the "Godfather of World Music." In 1995, he celebrated
his 75th birthday with a series of special events around the world and
has also been writing his autobiography, to be published in 1996.
He was born Robindra Shankar, in Benares, United Province, on April
7, 1920, the youngest of the four brothers who survived to adulthood.
His father, Shyam Shankar, was an eminent scholar, statesman, and lawyer,
but was absent for most of his childhood. The young Shankar (nicknamed
"Robu") was therefore raised by his mother in some poverty.
His eldest brother, the legendary dancer Uday Shankar, was already in
Europe, dancing with Anna Pavlova, before establishing his own Indian
dance troupe. In 1930, Robu, his mother and brothers moved to Paris
to join the troupe, and so began life in the public eye.
Indian dance and music were previously unknown in the West, and for
eight years, the troupe was feted as an exotic phenomenon everywhere
- particularly in North America, Europe and India. Robu went to school
for two years in Paris, then increasingly became involved in the troupe's
activities. He began by accompanying the group musically, but soon became
a dancer himself. In 1935, the troupe was joined for a year by Ustad
Allauddin Khan, an extraordinary virtuoso musician, commonly recognized
as the founder of modern Hindustani classical music for his assimilation
and mastering of many styles of India's varied musical tradition. Shankar
was captivated, and when the troupe returned to India in 1938, he became
"Baba" Allauddin Kahn's disciple in Maihar, Central India.
For nearly seven years, he learned sitar according to the old guru-shishya
approach, characterized by disciplined study in an isolated environment
and a neo-religious reverence for the guru. He also married Baba's daughter,
Annapurna, in 1941; they had a son, Shubho, in 1942.
Now known as Ravi Shankar, he gradually gained a name as a performer.
His first concert was in 1939, and in 1940, he began recitals on All-India
Radio. Of particular renown were the innovative "jugalbandi"
duets he played with the young Ali Akbar Khan, his guru's son, today
acknowledged as the master of the sarod. After ending full-time training,
Shankar moved to Bombay, joining for one year (1945-46), the Indian
People's Theatre Association, where he contributed the score to the
ballet India Immortal (1945), and the soundtrack music to two highly
influential, though commercially unsuccessful, realist movies, Dharti
Ke Lal and Neecha Nagar (both 1946). He also composed a new tune for
the national song, "Sare Jahan Se Accha," which has become
a popular standard.
Shortly after India's independence, he put on two productions of the
ballet, The Discovery of India (1947), based on books by Nehru, who
even attended a performance himself. Shankar then moved to Delhi to
become Director of Music at All-India Radio (1949-56), attaining further
fame throughout his new Vadya Vrinda ("National Orchestra")
for his experiments with Indian orchestral music, until then underdeveloped
as a musical style. In this period, he also composed and directed the
music for Satyajit Ray's celebrated Apu Trilogy, including his debut
feature, Pather Panchali (1955), the first Indian film to succeed worldwide,
universally acknowledged as a masterpiece.
Increasingly,
Shankar was looking to take his music abroad. As a young boy in Paris,
he had been hurt by many Western musicians' ignorance of Indian music,
and he harbored a desire to rectify this. In 1952, he played for Yehudi
Menuhin in Delhi, awakening in the violin maestro an overwhelming passion
for Indian music (and an appreciation of Shankar himself - today Menuhin
describes him as one of the three finest musicians he has known in his
life, along with Enesco and Bartok), and starting a deep friendship
which continues today. In Menuhin, he saw for the first time a Western
classical musician who truly appreciated the beauty of Indian music.
Touring the USSR in 1954 with the first Indian Cultural Delegation further
encouraged him in his mission. So, in late 1956, he first toured Europe
and America as a solo sitarist, making a considerable impact through
his concerts and early LPs (Ravi Shankar Plays Three Classical Ragas
and India's Master Musician - both 1957). In 1958, he visited Japan
as leader of a cultural delegation and played at the UNESCO Music Festival
in Paris. Ever since, he has been a regular globe-trotting performer,
however, he always makes a point of returning to India every year.
Back at home, he was blossoming. His talent for orchestral composition
and love of stage extravaganzas spurred him on to a sequence of innovative
musicals and ballets, including Melody and Rhythm (1958, restaged 1962),
Samanya Kshati (1961), Chandalika, and Nava Rasa Ranga (both 1964).
In 1962, he opened the Kinnara Music School in Bombay. Yet, he remained
a classical soloist, famed for his interpretation of the traditional
ragga forms (from both the North of India, and unusually for a Hindustani,
the South) and for his composition of new ones. Many currently popular
raggas are his creations.
He has continued to provide well-received film soundtracks in both the
East and the West, including Kabuliwala in 1956 (for which he was named
best film music director at the 1957 Berlin Film Festival), the short,
A Chairy Tale (1957), Anuradha (1960), Godan (1963), Conrad Rook's Chappacqua
(1965), and Ralph Nelson's Oscar-winning Charly (1968). More recently,
there have been the Indian films, Meera (1979) and Genesis (1986). Richard
Attenborough's multi-Oscar-winning Gandhi (for which he received an
Academy Award nomination for the music), and the American children's
story, The Tiger and the Brahmin (1991).
There are two separate sides to Ravi Shankar as a musician: as a classical
sitar performer, he has always been a traditional purist, but as a composer,
he has sought to push back boundaries. Even before the sitar explosion
that occurred in 1966 when he met George Harrison, he was working with
and influencing musicians in different musical spheres, including jazz,
Western classical and Folk.
He first explored the similarities between Indian music and Jazz in
the album, Improvisations (1962), which featured Bud Shank. He gave
lessons in Indian music to John Coltrane and Don Ellis and composed
the piece, Rich a la Rakha, for Buddy Rich and his own erstwhile tabla
accompanist, Alla Rakha. For the Bombay festival, Jazzmine (1980), he
wrote pieces for, among others, saxophonist John Handy.
In 1966, he played his first sitar-violin duet with Menuhin at the Bath
Festival, and the following year, he famously reprised the collaboration
at the United Nations as a centerpiece of the Human Rights Day celebrations,
signifying that he was, by then, synonymous with the internationalization
of cultures. He and Menuhin together issued three volumes of West Meets
East recordings, the first of which won the Grammy Award for 1967's
Best Chamber Music Performance. West Meets East: Album 3 (1977) also
featured French flautist, Jean-Pierre Rampal, in two Shankar-composed
pieces.
But it was his meeting with and teaching Harrison in 1966 that proved
most earth-shaking of all. Indian music and culture were suddenly given
maximum exposure in the West, and Shankar leaped into the popular consciousness,
from highly-respected classical musician to the hippie idol of Monterey
and Woodstock. By 1967, he could open a Los Angeles branch of Kinnara.
Attaining the mainstream of Western popular culture proved to be a mixed
blessing; Harrison has remained a close friend to this day, and Shankar
took to this new level of celebrity enthusiastically (although fame
was nothing new to him), but he objected to some of the hippie's drug-taking
and misrepresentation of India, and said so publicly. After Woodstock
(1969), he gave up appearances at pop festivals.
Clarification of his culture and message was a consistent theme for
Shankar in the late Sixties and early Seventies. He wrote his first
book, My Music, My Life, which was the subject of the film, Raga, which
traced his roots in India and documented his impact in America; he consequently
became the Visiting Professor at City College, New York, for the fall
semester of 1967. He was also very keen to advance opportunities for
Indian musicians to gain exposure outside of their homeland. He was
probably the first to bring other Indian soloists to the West, as in
the case of 1968's Festival of India concerts.
Shankar began a further direction with the composition and performance
of the first-ever Concerto for Sitar written for a western orchestra.
It premiered in London (1971), featuring the London Symphony Orchestra,
conductor Andre Previn, and Shankar himself as a soloist. He wrote a
second such piece in 1981, this time in tandem with the New York Philharmonic
and its conductor, Shankar's close friend Zubin Mehta.
Harrison and Shankar inspired the 1971 Concerts for Bangladesh, the
first major music charity event. The soundtrack won Shankar his second
Grammy, for Best Album of 1972. Harrison continued to assist in the
discovery of Indian music by the West, playing on the LP Shankar Family
and Friends (1973) and producing Music Festival From India (1975), which
featured a host of the finest soloists from India. They also shared
the billing on their "Dark Horse" tour of the USA and Canada
in late 1974.
After this period, Shankar went through a phase of reaffirming his roots,
returning to the classical fold because of residual fears (that he now
thinks were unfounded) that Indian music was being harmed by its exposure
in the West. Although never relinquishing his international identity,
he felt it necessary to temporarily reduce his profile in the West and
focus more on India. His international experiments were thus less common,
although he did visit Japan to write for, and record with, shakahachi
player, Hozan Yamamoto, and koko virtuoso, Susumii Miyashita. The result
was the album, East Greets East (1978).
These efforts paid off, for by the Eighties, he had achieved the international
respect that he sought: he was appointed the Artistic Director of the
Asian Olympics, held in Delhi in 1982. Moreover, he was now able to
fulfill more of his wishes for cross-cultural experiments. In 1985,
he undertook a further Indo-Japanese work, performed live in Los Angeles.
On the album, Tana Mana (1987), he explored the possibilities of new
synthesizer and emulator technology and merged it with Indian instruments,
vocals, rhythms, and artists, as well as with dancers from the Bolshoi,
in a stunning live performance in the Kremlin. The recording became
one of his finest albums, Ravi Shankar Inside The Kremlin (1989). In
April 1989, he performed his Sitar Concerto #1 on tour in Europe and
India with Zubin Mehta and the European Youth Orchestra, following up
with the album, Passages (1990), another electronic collaboration, this
time with founder of minimalism, Philip Glass. He also performed in
the production, in Britain (1989) and India (1991), of a new "musical
theatre" he specially composed, Ghanashyam.
Countless honors have been bestowed upon India's unofficial cultural
ambassador in recent years, foremost among which have been the Padma
Vibhushan (India's highest civilian award, 1981), the Grand Prize at
the Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prizes (1991), France's Commandeur de l'Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres (1985), and eleven honorary doctorates. He also
served a six-year term (1986-92) in India's parliamentary upper chamber,
the Rajya Sabha, and performed for the British Royal Family before the
state banquet in honor of Indian President Venkataraman (1990).
Today, Shankar continues to work at a rate belying his 75 years and
recent health problems (he has had two heart attacks). In the last 12
months, he has played in Japan, Singapore, America, Europe and India,
and he remains ambitious for the future. His long-term hopes are pinned
on Anoushka, his 14-year-old daughter by second wife Sukanya, with whom
he now lives in California. Talented Anoushka has already had her concert
debut on sitar, and it will be fitting if the torch of Ravi Shankar,
perhaps greatest innovator of our time but a classical purist at heart,
is carried one day by his own child.
Eyeneer
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