Ravi Shankar

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Image:Sitar Ravi Shankar.jpg Ravi Shankar (born April 7 1920) is a Bengali-Indian musician best known for his virtuosity on the sitar. A disciple of Baba Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar gharana of Indian classical music), Pandit Ravi Shankar is arguably the best-known Indian instrumentalist. He had also danced in his elder brother Uday Shankar's dance troupe.

Shankar is India's most esteemed musical ambassador and a singular phenomenon in the classical music worlds of East and West. As a performer, composer, teacher and writer, he has done more for Indian music than any other musician. He is well known for his pioneering work in bringing Indian music to the West. This however, he did only after long years of dedicated study under his illustrious guru Baba Allaudin Khan and after making a name for himself in India. Shankar was well known outside India, performing in major events such as the Royal Festival and Edinburgh Festival when George Harrison, a member of The Beatles, began experimenting with the sitar in 1965. The two eventually met due to this common interest and became close friends, and that in turn expanded Shankar's fame as a pop star and as Harrison's mentor. This development greatly expanded his career. He was invited to play venues that were unusual for a classical musician, such as the 1967 Monterey Music Festival in Monterey, California. He was also one of the artists who performed at the Woodstock Festival (1969) or The Concert for Bangladesh (1971).

On a trip to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district after performing in Monterey, Shankar wrote "I felt offended and shocked to see India being regarded so superficially and its great culture being exploited. Yoga, Tantra, mantra, kundalini, ganja, hashish, Kama Sutra? They all became part of a cocktail that everyone seemed to be lapping up!".

Shankar has written two concertos for sitar and orchestra, violin-sitar compositions for Yehudi Menuhin and himself, music for flute virtuoso Jean Pierre Rampal, and music for Hozan Yamamoto, master of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute), and koto virtuoso Musumi Miyashita. He has composed extensively for films and ballets in India, Canada, Europe and the United States, including Chappaqua, Charly, Gandhi, and the Apu Trilogy. His recording "Tana Mana", released on the Private Music label in 1987, penetrated the New Age genre with its unique combination of traditional instruments with electronics. The classical composer Philip Glass acknowledges Shankar as a major influence, and the two collaborated to produce Passages, a recording of compositions in which each reworks themes composed by the other.

Shankar is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a member of the United Nations International Rostrum of composers. He has received many awards and honours from his own country and from all over the world, including fourteen honorary doctorates, the Padma Vibhushan, Desikottam, the Magsaysay Award from Manila, two Grammys, the Fukuoka Grand Prize from Japan, and the Crystal Award from Davos with the title "Global Ambassador", to name but some. In 1986 he was nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, India's upper house of Parliament. In 2002, he was conferred the inaugural Indian Chamber of Comerce Lifetime Achievement Award. The Bharat Ratna was awarded to him in 1999.

Shankar's daughters Anoushka Shankar, and Norah Jones are also talented mult-grammy award winning musicians. Shankar married twice, and Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar are half-sisters.

Shankar currently lives in Encinitas, California. He has been married several times. He is the uncle of the late sitarist Ananda Shankar, and his daughters Anoushka Shankar (who performs with him) and Grammy winner Norah Jones are also musicians, though Norah has succeeded by herself, not having had any contact with Shankar at all. He paved the way for many Indian musicians to have a platform to perform outside of India. Since then, Shankar has maintained a steady and acclaimed career as a musician and recording artist.

Films

External links

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