George Harrison with Ravi Shankar in 1967.
Ravi Shankar was a giant in music world both in subcontinent India and in the West. I attended two of his concerts, one in Lincoln Center and other in New Jersey PAC, and it was exhilarating experience especially when Allah Rakha is playing tabla. Recently he was performing along with his daughter Anoushka Shankar, also a virtuoso pianist. At New Jersey PAC, we actually went to listen to his daughter Anoushka Shankar who was supposed to play sitar along with his father but unfortunately got sick and did not play.
Some excerpts are worth reading from obituary posted by NYT;
Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso and composer who died on Tuesday at 92, created a passion among Western audiences for the rhythmically vital, melodically flowing ragas of classical Indian music — a fascination that had expanded by the mid-1970s into a flourishing market for world music of all kinds.
His final performance was a concert with his daughter, the virtuoso sitarist Anoushka Shankar, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, Calif. He was also the father of the singer Norah Jones.
Ravi Shankar, whose formal name was Robindra Shankar Chowdhury, was born on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India, to a family of musicians and dancers. His teacher was Allaudin Khan and he married his daughter, Annapurna Devi, also a sittarist.
Often his tabla player was Alla Rakha, who became a renowned soloist in his own right. At times, Mr. Shankar also shared the spotlight with Ali Akbar Khan, a master of the sarod, another Indian stringed instrument. These concerts, including an annual performance at Carnegie Hall, adhered to traditional forms, in which the musicians would improvise on a raga, often ecstatically, for about an hour per piece.
Through his recitals and his recordings on the Columbia, EMI and World Pacific labels, Mr. Shankar built a Western following for the sitar. In 1952 he began performing with Menuhin, with whom he made three recordings for EMI: “West Meets East” (1967), “West Meets East, Vol. 2” (1968) and “Improvisations: West Meets East” (1977). He also made recordings with Rampal.
Click below to read full article;
Posted by F. Sheikh