Ravi Shankar obituary
Ravi Shankar, who has died aged 92 after undergoing heart-valve replacement surgery, was the Indian maestro who put the sitar on the musical map. George Harrison called him "the godfather of world music", and it was Shankar's vision that brought the sounds of the raga into western consciousness. He was thus the first performer and composer to substantially bridge the musical gap between India and the west.
He was still winning awards in the new century: in 2002 his album Full Circle/Live at Carnegie Hall (2000) achieved a Grammy for best world music album. Shankar's distinction as a sitar player lay in his brilliant virtuosity, creativity and vast range of musicianship. In the west his name is synonymous with the music of India.
Ravindra Shankar – in Bengali, Robindro Shaunkar – Chowdhury was born in the holy city of Benares, now Varanasi. The youngest of five sons, he belonged to a family of Bengali Brahmins from Jessore, now in Bangladesh, who were much influenced by the reformist ideas of writers such as Rabindranath Tagore, one of the major figures of the Indian Renaissance. Ravi's father was a Sanskrit scholar who became chief minister of Jhalawar state, in the north-west of India. As a child in Benares, Ravi had his passion for music awakened by Vedic chants. But his first commitment was to dance.
His eldest brother, Uday, had worked as a dancer with Anna Pavlova before setting up an Indian music and dance company to perform in the west. Along with his mother and brothers, in 1930 Ravi joined him in Parisand became the youngest member of the company, specialising in cameo dance roles. For two years, he led the life of a French schoolboy at a Catholic establishment, and became fluent in the language. While in Paris he heard western classical music for the first time. He loved the guitar artistry of Andrés Segovia and the singing of Feodor Chaliapin. Opera, too, enchanted him.
However, once back in India, he set his heart on becoming a sitarist after listening to the melodious playing of an older boy. He resolved to learn from the famous sitar teacher and performer Inayat Khan, the father of the celebrated sitarist Vilayat Khan and the sarodist Imrat Khan, but on the day of the initiation ceremony Shankar fell ill with typhoid.
Later, at the age of 18, he was apprenticed to Allauddin Khan, a disciple of Wazir Khan, who was a direct descendent of the legendary Tansen, the chief musician of the Mughal emperor Akbar. For seven years Khan was Shankar's musical mentor and through this connection Shankar inherited a great tradition of classical music. In his autobiography, My Music, My Life (1969), Shankar says that Baba, as he called his teacher, made his pupils practise for hours on end and often resorted to severe corporal punishment. However, on only one occasion did Baba smack him on the hands. In 1941, Shankar married Khan's daughter Annapurna, herself an accomplished musician, and they had a son Shubhendra before separating later in the decade. Another musician, he went on to accompany his father on tour, and died in 1992.
Shankar gave his first concert in 1939, and the following year began giving recitals with Allauddin Khan's son Ali Akbar Khan, the sarodist, on All India Radio. He first made an impression in his own right with scores written in Mumbai for two notable Indian films of 1946, Dharti ke Lal (Children of the Earth) and Neecha Nagar (The City Below), and composed for the Indian People's Theatre Association. In 1946-47 he was involved with producing and composing music for a ballet entitled The Discovery of India, based on the book by Jawaharlal Nehru.. Read more:
