Ravi Shankar

Information about Ravi Shankar

For other people named Ravi Shankar, see Ravi Shankar (disambiguation).


Pandit Ravi Shankar (Bengali: রবি শঙ্কর Robi Shôngkor, Devanagari: रवि शंकर, born April 7, 1920, in Benares, United Provinces, British India) is an Indian composer and sitar player. He is a disciple of Allauddin Khan (founder of the Maihar gharana of Indian classical music).

He is considered one of the greatest sitar players of modern times. He is also among the Indian classical musicians to have achieved fame in Europe and America. This was in some part due to his association with The Beatles (particularly George Harrison, who described Shankar as the "Godfather of world music") as well as with his own personal charisma.

Shankar's musical career spans eight decades, from the 1930s to the 2000s. He holds the Guinness Record for the longest international career. Shankar is the father of singer Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar.

Musical career

Ravi not only studied under Allaudin Khan, but actually lived with him as if he were his son. This type of mentorship is typical of the Indian Classical music tradition. Ravi's first public performances in India came in 1939. Formal training ended in 1944, and he worked out of Bombay. He began writing scores for film and ballet and started a recording career with HMV's Indian affiliate. He became music director of All India Radio in the 1950s.

Shankar then became well known to the music world outside India, first performing in the Soviet Union in 1953 and then the West in 1956. He performed in major events such as the Edinburgh Festival as well as major venues such as Royal Festival Hall.

He was invited to play venues that were unusual for a classical musician, such as the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California, with Ustad Allah Rakha on tabla. He was also one of the artists who performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and with Harrison was one of the organizers of The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, in an attempt to raise awareness of the growing crisis that was occurring in East Pakistan where Shankar's family origins lay. Ravi Shankar & Friends co-headlined Harrison's 1974 tour of North America with mixed reviews. His final working album with Harrison was on a 1997 album, Chants of India, where Harrison grew an interest in chant music. After his colleague's death on 29 November in 2001, after a long fight against cancer, Shankar, his daughter, Anoushka, along with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Billy Preston, among many others attended Concert for George in London, where Shankar dedicated the memorial to Harrison.

Shankar has been critical of some facets of the Western reception of Indian music. 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!" In 1969 he published an English language autobiography, My Music, My Life.

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 Hōzan 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 (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), 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. In 2002, Ravi and his daughter Anoushka played at "The Concert For George". 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 also composed the sitar part in Glass's 2004 composition Orion.

Ravi Shankar has homes in Encinitas, California; Warren, New Jersey; and New Delhi.

Honors

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 14 honorary doctorates, the Padma Vibhushan, Desikottam, the Magsaysay Award from Manila, three Grammy Awards, the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (Grand Prize) from Japan, and the Crystal Award from Davos, with the title "Global Ambassador," to name but some. In 1986 he was nominated to be a member of the Rajya Sabha, India's upper house of Parliament, for six years. In 2002, he was conferred the inaugural Indian Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award. The Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, was awarded to him in 1999. In 1998 he was awarded the Polar Music Prize with Ray Charles. He shared an Academy Award nomination with George Fenton for Best Original Score to Gandhi (1982).

Discography

  • Three Ragas (1958)
  • Improvisations (1962)
  • India's Most Distinguished Musician (1962)
  • India's Master Musician (1963)
  • In London (1964)
  • Ragas & Talas (1964)
  • Portrait of a Genius (1964)
  • The Sound of Sitar (1965)
  • Live at Monterey (1967)
  • In San Francisco (1967)
  • West Meets East (1967)
  • At the Monterey Pop Festival (1967)
  • A Morning Raga / An Evening Raga (1968)
  • The Sounds of India (1968)
  • In New York (1968)
  • Tana Mana (1987)
  • Woodstock Festival (1969)

Films

Bibliography

  • Raga Mala (1997) (Autobiography edited by George Harrison)
  • Learning Indian music: A systematic approach (1979)
  • My Music, My Life (1968) (Autobiography)
  • Music memory (1967)

External links

Persondata
NAMEShankar, Ravi
ALTERNATIVE NAMESরবি শঙ্কর (Bengali); Shôngkor, Robi (Bengali transliteration)
SHORT DESCRIPTIONMusician
DATE OF BIRTHApril 7 1920
PLACE OF BIRTHVaranasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
DATE OF DEATHliving
PLACE OF DEATH
Ravi Shankar may refer to:
  • Ravi Shankar, an Indian musician and sitar virtuoso
  • Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a spiritual leader
  • Ravi Shankar Sharma, an Indian film score composer, better known as Ravi and Bombay Ravi.

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Bengali}}} 
Writing system: Bengali script 
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April 7 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, mainly referred to simply as the United Provinces, was a province of British India, which existed from 1902 to 1947. From 1835 to 1902, the province was known as the North-Western Provinces.
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composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises or plays a musical instrument.
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The bass sitar (Hindi/Sanskrit: सितार्, Urdu/ ستار) is a plucked stringed instrument. It uses sympathetic strings along with a lond rod and a gourd resonating chamber to produce a very harsh sound.
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Allauddin Khan (Bangla: ওস্তাদ আলাউদ্দীন খান, also known as Baba Allauddin Khan
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The Maihar gharana was formed principally by sarod maestro Baba Allaudin Khan in Maihar, India.

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The Beatles were an English musical group from Liverpool whose members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. They are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music.
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George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an influental English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, author and sitarist best known as the lead guitarist of The Beatles.
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Norah Jones (born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar on March 30 1979 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and occasional actress of American and Indian descent.
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Anoushka Shankar (b. June 9, 1981) is a sitar player and composer in the United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, Indian sitar player, and Sukanya Rajan. Through her father, she is the half-sister of Grammy Award winner Norah Jones.

Shankar was born in London.
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Mumbai (Marathi: मुंबई Mumbaī
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Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.
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