Ravi Shankar

an obituary in The Times, London 13 December 2012
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Shankar, maestro of the sitar Gary Calton / Camera Press
Ravi Shankar, musician, was born on April 7, 1920. He died on December 11, 2012, aged 92
Sitar player who won international acclaim through the Beatles and was the grandfather of world music
The virtuoso sitar player Ravi Shankar came to world attention when the Beatles, in common with the wider hippy movement of the 1960s, became interested in Eastern mysticism and travelled to India to immerse themselves in its culture. George Harrison, in particular, became fascinated by the stringed instrument consisting of a long, hollow neck with a gourd chamber at the base in which the sound of the plucked strings resonates.
The two musicians went on to play together on the international stage. The encounter between the Liverpool pop stars and the Indian classical musician also led to the flowering of what became known as world music — now a huge enterprise — with Shankar as one of its founding fathers. But, paradoxically, while the Beatles had brought Shankar’s name to the world stage, he was ambivalent about its consequences: his profoundly serious music adapted for impatient Western tastes and often heard in a drug-fuelled atmosphere.
The youngest of five sons, Ravi Shankar was born in Bararas, Uttar Pradesh, India, of an orthodox Bengali Brahmin family. He received his childhood education in Benares (Varanasi), an ancient centre of Hindu pilgrimage, and in Paris.
The juxtaposition and rapprochement of Eastern and Western music was the abiding aim of Shankar’s career. This ambition found early fulfilment from 1930 to 1938 when he danced with his brother Uday’s Paris-based dramatic troupe, encountering European artists including Enescu, Segovia, Toscanini, Paderewski, Casals, Heifetz, Kreisler and Chaliapin. The troupe, managed by Sol Hurok, made its New York debut in 1932.
Shankar was the foremost exponent in his generation of the sitar, the most popular string instrument of northern India, whose potential both for ornamental delicacy and robust power he fully exploited in his many public performances, both in India and the West. He began sitar studies with UstadAllauddin Khan, later his principal guru, in 1936 during a summer at Dartington Hall, Devon.
From 1938 to 1944 he withdrew from public life to immerse himself in sitar studies, living at Khan’s house in Maihar, central India, where his fellow students were Khan’s daughter, Annapurna, whom he later married, and his son, Ali Akbar, who was to become a world-famous player of the sarod (a short-necked lute).
Throughout his career Shankar was involved in all aspects of Indian performing arts including music, dance, drama and film. In 1944 he moved to Bombay (Mumbai), the most Westernised of India’s cities, where he was a leading figure in musical soirées and produced a ballet based on Nehru’s The Discovery of India.
From 1949 to 1956 he was director of music for All-India Radio, New Delhi, and also composer-conductor for its new instrumental ensemble. In this capacity he produced radio plays and musical dramas which, while retaining essential classical Indian features, also drew on folk styles and incorporated Western instruments. In 1955 he composed the score for Satyajit Ray’s first and classic film PatherPanachali.
In 1951 Shankar met Yehudi Menuhin, beginning a lifelong musical collaboration which did much to promote Indian music in the West and which offered Shankar a context for mixing Eastern and Western styles. They performed their first public duet in 1966 at the Bath Festival, and their 1967 recording, East Meets West, was widely regarded as one of the best composed and revolutionary records ever released.
From the 1960s Shankar gave concerts across Europe and America. As western youth explored Eastern philosophies and arts, he found himself at the centre of the international pop music world, a position which prompted cries of commercialisation from his critics in India. He met the Beatles in the mid-1960s and gave sitar lessons to Harrison, who in 1965 introduced the instrument to the Beatles songNorwegian Wood on the Rubber Soul album. Ever competitive, the Rolling Stones introduced the sitar to their music in their 1966 hitPaint it Black. Harrison, absorbed by the instrument, used it again inLove to You and Tomorrow Never Knows on the 1966 album Revolver and in Within You Without You on the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in 1967. In that same year Shankar performed at the Monterey Pop Festival — where he was somewhat overwhelmed by the decadent atmosphere including Jimi Hendrix setting light to his guitar — and he and Harrison appeared together in 1969 at the Woodstock Festival which he did not enjoy. Shankar, however, while a beneficiary of Western curiosity for all things Indian, spoke out against hippy Hinduism and the drug culture.
In 1963 Shankar had founded the Kinnara School of Music in Bombay and in 1967 he opened a branch in Los Angeles. Musical innovation was the hallmark of his career. His success in the West was due not only to innate talent but also to his instinctive ability to adapt Indian styles to a European audience, as well as to requirements of the music industry — from shortening raga performances for Western concerts, records and broadcast slots, to bending the rigid rules of “time theory”, under which each raga must be performed only at its assigned hour of the day.
Likewise he experimented within the Hindustani tradition, drawing musical inspiration from folk music as well as the Karnatic (South Indian) styles, and by devising new rhythmic cycles and musical forms.With Ali Akbar Khan, for instance, he initiated the sarod-sitar duet.
This drew some criticism from musical conservatives in India, but Shankar never entirely abandoned traditional forms, and he received awards from the the National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama in 1962, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1966 and from Unicef (for work in Bangladesh), the Presidential Padma Bhushan award and several honorary doctorates.
In 1968 he published My Music, My Life — an autobiographical survey of north Indian classical music. In 1971 he joined forces with Harrison to produce Concert for Bangladesh, a benefit concert that brought dozens of musicians onstage in New York and began the tradition of the good-cause gig. A year later, a documentary of his life, Raga, was released in which Menuhin and Harrison appeared. Revealingly, in the film he speaks of his disappointment at the Western drug culture’s appropriation of his religious music which it was in too much of a hurry to appreciate.
Shankar had three children by three different women, someetimes in overlapping relationships. His son was brought up by his first wife, Annapurna. Although the relationship did not last, they remained married for many years. A relationship with the Indian dancer Kamala Sastri stretched from 1967 to 1981. Shankar had a daughter by the New York concert producer Sue Jones, and another daughter by his tanpura player, SukanyaRajan. He married Rajan in 1989.
This side of his life was brought to the world’s attention when his estranged daughter, the singer and songwriter Norah Jones, achieved sales of 20 million for her debut album Come Away With Me, and chose not to mention her father when collecting eight Grammy awards. Both father and daughter explained that the rift was healed, however; Shankar keen to stress that he had never meant to lose contact with his daughter and that he claimed no credit for her success.
By contrast he was very much the guide and inspiration for his second daughter, Anoushka, whose classical Indian music album was nominated for a Best World Music album Grammy in 2003. Father and daughter often performed together in the 2000s.
Shankar composed the score for Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi(1982), and, in addition to Menuhin, he also enjoyed musical collaborations with the American composer Philip Glass and the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Shankar remained great friends with Harrison until the Beatle’s death in 2001, and played a large part in the concert to celebrate his music in 2003.
Ultimately his greatness arose from the match of his manifold talents and broad world view. His immense personal success opened the way for many other Indian artists to appear in the West and for many Western listeners to delight in the subcontinent’s musical heritage.
Latterly he lived in California. He is survived by his wife, Sukanya, and daughters. His son, Shubhendra, who played the sitar and surbahar (bass sitar) and had accompanied his father on tours, died in 1992.

— withNarandasBhayani.