Ragas Created Reconstructed and named by Ravi Shankar and performed by his disciples
Anoushiks Shankar - SitarBarry Phillips - CelloBarun Kumar Pal - Slide GuitarDeepak Chaudhary - SitarGaurav Mazumdar - SitarKartick Kumar - SitarKartik Seshadri - SitarLakshon Shankar - VocalManju Mehta - SitarPartho Sarathy - SarodSamaresh Chawdhury - VocalShamim Ahmed Khan - SitarShubhendra Rao - SitarVishwa Mohan Bhatt - Slide Guitar
With the century drawing to a close and the melodies of India’s Golden Jubilee Independence celebrations still ringing in our ears it is an apposite time to east one’s mind back 50 years in the life of India’s foremost classical musician Ravi Shankar.
So much has changed since Indian independence, but as the sitar maestro himself, educated in Paris between the ages of ten and twelve, might remark. Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose. Then as now the Indian subcontinent embodied great traditions, a bright new future, he and the tragic division and in deprivations of the present. Then as now, Ravi Shankar was in performing his music with energy and inspiration that he seemed to draw from somewhere else entirely. Indeed, at midnight on August 15 of 1991 he fittingly found himself giving a recital in Bombay, the same city in which he had observed the milestone exactly 50 years earlier, the city which, renamed as Mumbai, now seems to crystallize the re hopes and fears of the contemporary India.
By 1947, the 27 year old .an Ram Shankar was well on his us way to becoming a house hold name in India. He was the rising in star of All India Radio, soon to become its director of music. He had written the score for influential movies and mounted ambitious stage productions including a musical stage version of Jawaharlal Nehru’s discovery of India receiving the personal acclaim of the author who was about to become India’s first prime minister. He had spent a year as music Director of the Influential Bombay based Indian peoples theater association. He had composed the first few of over thirty new ragas and also written a new melody for Mohammed Iqbal’s patriotic poem sare Jahan Se Accha (which to this day remans a national song although Shankar’s melody is often wrongly credited as traditional) above all he had been through seven years of intensive musical training with his guru Ustad Baba Allaudin Khan the period that he ascknowledge to have been the most important of his life and had emerged as a scintillating performer of sitar.
Even before this he had enjoyed fame as a dancer and musician in the celebrated troupe of dancers and musicians led by his legendary brother Uday Shankar, which introduced Europeans Americans and many Indians to Indian classical dance foreshadowing Ravi Shankar’s own pioneering performances of Indian classical music in the west two decades later.
Still to come in 1947 were the achievements for which he is best known, establishing the National Orchestra at all India Radio Ground breaking tours in both hemispheres celebrated film scores experimental collaborations performances at Monterey Woodstock, and the concert for Bangladesh and a seemingly endless series of classical recordings.
Yet 50 years ago he was already established as one of his country’s most exciting young artists and thus his brilliance and renown have been ever present throughout the history of independent Indian. Not for nothing is he widely known as India’s unofficial cultural ambassador to the world.
One quality that truly marks him out is his encapsulation of both East and West: the ability to feel and convey powerful spirituality without losing sophistication; to be both unworldly and yet worldly. This is probably the best explanation of why he, rather than anyone else, was the groundbreaking proselytizer of Indian music: in the West. AsYehudi Menuhin writers in writes in his After word to Ravi Shankar’s new autobiography, Raga Mala, Ravi is also an extremely sophisticated man, mid the very Western in that way/but very Indian too. When an Indian is both sophisticated and worldly you have a. very high kind of social being Ravi Shankar is at home with breeds of musicians and all peoples of the world and is someone who certainly can walk with kings and yet has not lost the common touch.
Today he continues to work at a rate belying his years in addition to his regular performances on the classical music circuit he is still recording his most recent project being Chants of India featuring new recordings of traditional Vedic Chants. His autobiography the product of over three years work has just been released. Throughout all he has done and continues to do his passion for music as a means to spiritual.
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist