|
Ravi Shankar |
Shankar performs in
Delhi
in March 2009 |
|
Background information |
| Birth name |
Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury |
| Born |
7 April 1920
Varanasi,
United Provinces,
India |
| Died |
11 December 2012 (aged 92)
La Jolla,
San Diego, California,
United States |
|
Genres |
Hindustani classical music |
| Occupations |
composer, musician |
| Instruments |
sitar |
| Years active |
1939–2012 |
|
Labels |
East Meets West Music[1] |
| Associated acts |
Uday Shankar,
Allauddin Khan,
Ali Akbar Khan,
Lakshmi Shankar,
Yehudi Menuhin,
Chatur Lal,
Alla Rakha,
George Harrison,
Anoushka Shankar,
Norah Jones,
The Beatles,
John Coltrane |
| Website |
RaviShankar.org |
Ravi Shankar,
KBE (Bengali:
রবি শংকর, IPA: [ˈrɔbi
ˈʃɔŋkɔr]; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), often referred to
by the title
Pandit,
was an Indian
musician and composer who played the
sitar, a
plucked string instrument. He has been described as the best-known
contemporary Indian musician.[2]
Shankar was born in
Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance
group of his brother
Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing
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, he began to tour Europe and the Americas playing
Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the
1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist
Yehudi Menuhin and
rock artist
George Harrison of
The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for
sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s.
From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the
upper chamber of the
Parliament of India. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian
honour, the
Bharat Ratna, in 1999, and received three
Grammy Awards. He continued to perform in the 2000s, sometimes with
his younger daughter,
Anoushka.
Early life
Shankar was born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury[3]
on 7 April 1920 in
Varanasi to a
Bengali Brahmin family as the youngest of seven brothers.[3][4][5]
His father, Shyam Shankar, a
Middle Temple
barrister and scholar who served as
dewan
of
Jhalawar, used the Sanskrit spelling of the family name and removed
its last part.[3][6]
Shyam was married to Shankar's mother Hemangini Devi, and later worked
as a lawyer in
London, England.[3]
There he married a second time while Devi raised Shankar in Varanasi,
and did not meet his son until he was eight years old.[3]
Shankar shortened the Sanskrit version of his first name, Ravindra, to
Ravi, for "sun".[3]
At the age of ten, after spending his first decade in Varanasi,
Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer
Uday Shankar.[7][8]
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.[4][5]
Uday's dance group toured Europe and the
United States of America in the early to mid-1930s and Shankar
learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and
became acquainted with Western customs.[9]
Shankar heard the lead musician for the
Maihar
court,
Allauddin Khan, in December 1934 at a music conference in
Kolkata
and Uday convinced the Maharaja of Maihar in 1935 to allow Khan to
become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe.[9]
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.[9]
Career
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 due to political
conflicts that would lead to
World War II.[10]
Shankar gave up his dancing career in 1938 to go to
Maihar
and study
Indian classical music as Khan's pupil, living with his family in
the traditional
gurukul
system.[7]
Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training on
sitar
and
surbahar, learned
ragas
and the musical styles
dhrupad,
dhamar, and
khyal,
and was taught the techniques of the instruments
rudra veena,
rubab, and
sursingar.[7][11]
He often studied with Khan's children
Ali Akbar Khan and
Annapurna Devi.[10]
Shankar began to perform publicly on sitar in December 1939 and
his debut performance was a
jugalbandi (duet) with Ali Akbar Khan, who played the string
instrument
sarod.[12]
Shankar completed his training in 1944.[4]
Following his training, he moved to
Mumbai
and joined the
Indian People's Theatre Association, for whom he composed music for
ballets in 1945 and 1946.[4][13]
Shankar recomposed the music for the popular song "Sare
Jahan Se Achcha" at the age of 25.[14][15]
He began to record music for
HMV
India and worked as a music director for
All India Radio (AIR), New Delhi, from February 1949 to January
1956.[4]
Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra at AIR and composed for
it; in his compositions he combined Western and classical Indian
instrumentation.[16]
Beginning in the mid-1950s he composed the music for the
Apu Trilogy by
Satyajit Ray, which became internationally acclaimed.[5][17]
He was music director for several Hindi movies including
Godaan
and
Anuradha.[18]
International career 1956–1969
Tabla player
Alla Rakha, who was a frequent accompanist of Shankar,
photographed in 1988
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.[19]
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.[20][21]
Shankar declined to attend due to problems in his marriage, but
recommended Ali Akbar Khan to play instead.[21]
Khan reluctantly accepted and performed with
tabla
(percussion) player
Chatur Lal in the
Museum of Modern Art, and he later became the first Indian classical
musician to perform on American television and record a full raga
performance, for
Angel Records.[22]
Shankar heard about the positive response Khan received and resigned
from AIR in 1956 to tour the
United Kingdom,
Germany,
and the
United States.[23]
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.[23]
In 1958, Shankar participated in the celebrations of the tenth
anniversary of the United Nations and
UNESCO
music festival in Paris.[13]
From 1961, he toured Europe, the United States, and Australia, and
became the first Indian to compose music for non-Indian films.[13]
Chatur Lal accompanied Shankar on tabla until 1962, when
Alla Rakha assumed the role.[23]
Shankar founded the Kinnara School of Music in
Mumbai
in 1962.[24]
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.[23]
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.[25]
Harrison became interested in Indian classical music, bought a sitar
and used it to record the song "Norwegian
Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".[26]
This led to Indian music being used by other musicians and created the
raga
rock trend.[26]
Harrison met Shankar in London in 1966 and visited India for six
weeks to study sitar under Shankar in
Srinagar.[15][27][28]
During the visit, a documentary film about Shankar named
Raga was shot by
Howard Worth, and released in 1971.[29]
Shankar's association with Harrison greatly increased Shankar's
popularity and Ken Hunt of
Allmusic would state that Shankar had become "the most famous Indian
musician on the planet" by 1966.[4][27]
In 1967, he performed at the
Monterey Pop Festival and won a
Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for
West Meets East, a collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin.[27][30]
The same year, the Beatles won the
Grammy Award for Album of the Year for
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which included "Within
You Without You" by Harrison, a song that was influenced by Indian
classical music.[28][30]
Shankar opened a Western branch of the Kinnara School of Music in Los
Angeles, California, in May 1967, and published an autobiography, My
Music, My Life, in 1968.[13][24]
In 1968, he scored for the movie
Charly.
He performed at the
Woodstock Festival in August 1969, and found he disliked the venue.[27]
In the 1970s Shankar distanced himself from the
hippie
movement.[31]
International career 1970–2012
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.[13][32][33]
In late 1970, the
London Symphony Orchestra invited Shankar to compose a concerto with
sitar; Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra was performed with
André Previn as conductor and Shankar playing the sitar.[5][34]
Hans Neuhoff of
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart has criticised the usage of
the orchestra in this concert as "amateurish".[2]
George Harrison organized the charity
Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, in which Shankar
participated.[27]
After the musicians had tuned up on stage for over a minute, the naive
crowd broke into applause, to which the amused Shankar responded, "If
you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more".[35]
Although interest in Indian music had decreased in the early 1970s, the
concert album became one of the best-selling recordings to feature
the genre and won Shankar a second Grammy Award.[30][33]
During the 1970s, Shankar and Harrison worked together again,
recording
Shankar Family & Friends in 1973 and touring North America the
following year to a mixed response after Shankar had toured Europe with
the Harrison-sponsored
Music Festival from India.[36]
The demanding schedule weakened Shankar, and he suffered a heart attack
in Chicago in November 1974, causing him to miss a portion of the tour.[37]
In his absence, Shankar's sister-in-law, singer
Lakshmi Shankar, conducted the touring orchestra.[37]
The touring band visited the
White House on invitation of
John Gardner Ford, son of U.S. President
Gerald Ford.[37]
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.[38][39]
Shankar was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for his work on the 1982
movie
Gandhi, but lost to
John Williams'
E.T.[40]
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.[15][41]
Shankar composed the dance drama Ghanashyam in 1989.[24]
His liberal views on musical cooperation led him to contemporary
composer
Philip Glass, with whom he released an album,
Passages, in 1990.[7]
Shankar underwent an
angioplasty in 1992 due to heart problems, after which George
Harrison involved himself in several of Shankar's projects.[42]
Because of the positive response to Shankar's 1996 career compilation
In Celebration, Shankar wrote a second autobiography,
Raga Mala, with Harrison as editor.[42]
He performed in between 25 and 40 concerts every year during the late
1990s.[7]
Shankar taught his daughter
Anoushka Shankar to play sitar and in 1997 became a Regent's
Lecturer at
University of California, San Diego.[43]
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, in 2002.[30][44]
Anoushka performed a composition by Shankar for the 2002 Harrison
memorial
Concert for George and Shankar wrote a third concerto for sitar
and orchestra for Anoushka and the
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.[45][46]
In June 2008, Shankar played what was billed as his last European
concert,[31]
but his 2011 tour included dates in the United Kingdom.[47]
Shankar performed his final concert, with daughter Anoushka, on 4
November 2012 at the
Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
Style and
contributions
Shankar developed a style distinct from that of his contemporaries
and incorporated influences from rhythm practices of
Carnatic music.[7]
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 by a section with
tabla
accompaniment featuring compositions associated with the prevalent
khyal
style.[7]
Shankar often closed his performances with a piece inspired by the
light-classical
thumri
genre.[7]
Shankar has been considered one of the top sitar players of
the second half of the 20th century.[2]
He popularized performing on the bass octave of the sitar for the
alap section and became known for a distinctive playing style in
the middle and high registers that used quick and short deviations of
the playing string and his sound creation through stops and strikes on
the main playing string.[2][7]
Narayana Menon of
The New Grove Dictionary noted Shankar's liking for rhythmic
novelties, among them the use of unconventional rhythmic cycles.[48]
Hans Neuhoff of
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart has argued that Shankar's
playing style was not widely adopted and that he was surpassed by other
sitar players in the performance of melodic passages.[2]
Shankar's interplay with
Alla Rakha improved appreciation for tabla playing in
Hindustani classical music.[2]
Shankar promoted the
jugalbandi duet concert style and introduced new ragas,
including Tilak Shyam, Nat Bhairav and
Bairagi.[7]
Recognition
Shankar won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the
1957 Berlin International Film Festival for composing the music for
the movie
Kabuliwala.[49]
He was awarded the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1962,[50]
and was named a
Fellow of the academy for 1975.[51]
Shankar was awarded the three highest national civil honours of India:
Padma Bhushan, in 1967,
Padma Vibhushan, in 1981, and
Bharat Ratna, in 1999.[52]
He received the music award of the
UNESCO
International Music Council in 1975, three
Grammy Awards, and was nominated for an
Academy Award.[13][30][40]
Shankar was awarded honorary degrees from universities in India and the
United States.[13]
He received the
Kalidas Samman from the
Government of Madhya Pradesh for 1987–88, the
Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 1991, the
Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1992, and the
Polar Music Prize in 1998.[53][54][55][56]
In 2001, Shankar was made an honorary
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by
Elizabeth II for his "services to music".[57]
Shankar was an honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1997 received the
Praemium Imperiale for music from the Japan Art Association.[7]
The American jazz saxophonist
John Coltrane named his son
Ravi Coltrane after Shankar.[58]
In 2010, Shankar received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the
University of Melbourne, Australia.[59]
He was also awarded France's highest civilian honour, the Knight of the
Legion of Honour. Post his death, Grammy has announced Pandit Ravi
Shankar as a recipient of the lifetime achievement Grammy
[60]
like Glenn Gould, Charlie Haden, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Carole King, Patti
Page and the Temptations.
Personal
life and family
Shankar married
Allauddin Khan's daughter
Annapurna Devi in 1941 and a son,
Shubhendra Shankar, was born in 1942.[11]
Shankar separated from Devi during the 1940s and had a relationship with
Kamala Shastri, a dancer, beginning in the late 1940s.[61]
An affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to the birth
of
Norah Jones in 1979.[61]
After separating from Kamala Shastri in 1981, Shankar lived with Sue
Jones until 1986. He married Sukanya Rajan in 1989 at
Chilkur Temple in
Hyderabad, India.[62]
He had known her since the 1970s.[61]
In 1981,
Anoushka Shankar was born to Shankar and Sukanya Rajan.
Shubhendra "Shubho" Shankar often accompanied his father on tours.[63]
He could play the sitar and surbahar, but elected not to
pursue a solo career. He died in 1992.[63]
Norah Jones became a successful musician in the 2000s, winning eight
Grammy Awards in 2003.[64]
Anoushka Shankar was nominated for a
Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 2003.[64]
Anoushka and her father were nominated for Best World Music Album at the
2013 Grammy Awards for separate albums.[65]
Shankar was a
Hindu
and a
vegetarian.[66][67]He
wore a large diamond ring which he said was “manifested” by
Sathya Sai Baba.[68]
He lived with Sukanya in
Encinitas, California.[69]
Illness and death
On 6 December 2012, Shankar was admitted to
Scripps Memorial Hospital in
La Jolla, San Diego, California after complaining of breathing
difficulties. He died on 11 December 2012 at around 16:30
PST.[70][71]
According to his spokesman, Stuart Wolferman, Shankar died at a hospital
near his home in Encinitas, California.[72]
The Ravi Shankar Foundation issued a statement that read Shankar
had suffered from upper-respiratory and heart issues over the past year
and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery on 6 December 2012.[73]
Reactions
Condolences were extended by the
President of India,[74]
Prime Minister of India[75]
and
Indian parliament,[76]
Other reactions from the Indian political and cultural spheres included:
Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's office which wrote on
Twitter
that he was "a national treasure and global ambassador of India's
cultural heritage." His cabinet colleague Minister of State for
Communications & IT
Milind Deora wrote: "Being a maestro wasn't his only achievement.
Pandit Ravi Shankar sold Brand India better than anyone else. RIP."
Gujurat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi added on Twitter: "Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi
Shankar was the legendary musician who gave new identity to Indian
classical music. May his soul rest in peace." While, India's Ambassador
to the U.S.
Nirupuma Rao also wrote on Twitter: "Pandit Ravi Shankar: his
last concert was particularly poignant. Anoushka and he played together
in perfect unison. A torch was passed." Other apolitical reactions
included:
Bollywood composer
Vishal Dadlani who wrote on Twitter: "The world's best-known
exponent of Indian music, he influenced the Beatles, and hence
everything since! RIP Pt. Ravi Shankar."
Santoor
players Shiv Kumar Sharma said: "It is a great loss, not just to Indian
music but to world music. He was a world musician." Novelist
Hari Kunzru added on Twitter: "RIP Pandit Ravi Shankar. My
father performed hand surgery on him. Stakes not low there..." Spiritual
guru
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not related) also wrote on Twitter:
"Pandit Ravi Shankar was a legend in music and he took classical music
to new heights."[77]
His death was also noted in the international and foreign language
media.[78]
The
Swara Samrat festival organized on January 5–6, 2013 was
dedicated to Ravi Shankar and
Ali Akbar Khan where musicians like
Shivkumar Sharma,
Birju Maharaj,
Hari Prasad Chaurasia,
Zakir Hussain,
Girija Devi etc performed.[79]