Ravi Shankar bridged cultures by bringing sitar to the West, but at a cost

Sandro Campardo/Keystone/AP/File

By Mark Guarino, Staff writer / December 12, 2012
Ravi Shankar, the Indian-born recording artist, is intrinsically linked to the sitar, the traditional steel-string Indian instrument he singlehandedly introduced to the Western world more than 60 years ago through collaborations with some of the biggest names in rock, jazz, and classical music.

His decades of ground-breaking work earned him recognition as an innovative giant for helping bridge the divergent musical strains of the two cultures –Beatles guitarist George Harrison referred to him as “the godfather of world music” – but it did not come without a price: the collaborations made him a controversial figure in his native country, and he often expressed regret that he may have overreached in believing contemporary audiences would comprehend the spiritual intent of his music.

Mr. Shankar passed away Tuesday in a hospital near his home in Encinitas, Ca. following surgery last week, according to his family.

IN PICTURES: Grammy nominees 2012

Shankar, who was born in Varanasi, India, joined a dance troupe organized by his brother at the age of 10. The experience brought him to Paris and then New York City where he was first exposed to Western music via Louis Armstrong and orchestras led by Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club.

He later returned to India and took up music, discovering he was drawn to the sitar, an instrument with over 20 steel strings that requires considerable strength to position correctly and brutal stamina to play. Adding to the complexity is the performing regimen: sitar players do not read music, but are required to memorize a reportoire of ragas, or traditional melodic patterns, that they then improvise upon. The practice can take years to master.

“It’s the only instrument you can’t call easy,” he told this writer in a 1998 interview.

Shankar’s career as a recording artist, film composer, international touring musician and orchestral director began in the 1940s. He later strove to work with musicians outside his tradition, including French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, American violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, to whom he gave lessons on Indian improvisation skills.

Read more on: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2012/1212/Ravi-Shankar-bridged-cultures-by-bringing-sitar-to-the-West-but-at-a-cost

Indian Classical Music 101 With Ravi Shankar

When Ravi Shankar visited NPR a few years ago, he reminisced about his youth as a dancer and about the joy he has experienced teaching his daughter, Anoushka, to become a master of his own instrument, the sitar. With radio host Fred Child at his side, Shankar also launched into an engaging introduction to the basics of Indian classical music, with examples played by Anoushka Shankar and tabla virtuoso Tanmoy Bose.

THE RAGA MAKES THE MELODY
The "raga" is the melodic form, but it is not just a scale, Shankar says. There are roughly 72 parent scales. And each scale has hundreds of ragas, which can be pentatonic (five notes), hexatonic (six notes) or full scale (seven notes). The possible combinations are endless.

Certain ragas are associated with times of day — morning, afternoon, night and late night — and for centuries, these associations have endured. In South India, however, they no longer observe this tradition in music. But, in the north, where Shankar is from, they still reserve certain ragas for specific times of day.



THE SHIMMERING SOUND OF THE SITAR

The sitar, India's most prevalent plucked stringed instrument, has been around for almost 800 years. But it has changed in shape and size. The types that you see today have been popular for less than 100 years, and have up to 23 strings. The shimmering sound of the sitar stems from the resonance of its sympathetic strings, which vibrate when others are plucked. All sitars are descended from an ancient instrument called the vina.





THE TALA SETS THE BEAT

The "tala" refers to the rhythmic system in Indian classical music. And, like the wide array of ragas, the number of individual rhythmic patterns is vast. Shankar says that no one can calculate the number. The rhythmic cycles can range from three to 108 beats, each capable of being divided in myriad ways.


"It takes a lot of intellect and a lot of years of practice and control to have a cycle in mind and to improvise on it," he says. The key role in Indian rhythm is given to the tabla — a pair of hand drums which differ from each other in size and sound. And, as with the Western timpani, changing the tension of the drum head produces different notes. The tabla player's role has typically been confined to accompaniment, to keep the musical form intact. But in recent years, thanks largely to Shankar, the role has expanded to allow for solos and increasingly virtuosic playing.





THE DRONE OF THE TANPURA

The long-necked tanpura — or tambura, as it is also known — is always in the background of Indian classical music. The reason, Shankar says, is that there is never any modulation between keys in a raga; the key always stays the same. The tanpura maintains, continuously, the drone of the tonic note. In Western music, the equivalent is sometimes called a pedal point, as if an organist is holding one foot on one pedal all the way through. Everything that happens melodically on top of that occurs in relation to that single note.






RASA: THE MANY MOODS OF INDIAN MUSIC

Rasas are the moods or emotions of Indian music. There are nine principal rasas: Shringaar (sensual), Raudra (anger), Hasya (happy), Vibhatsaya (disgust), Veera (heroic), Karuna (sympathy), Bhayanak (fear), Adabhuta (wonder) and Shanta (tranquil). "We always start with a very tranquil, meditative mood," Shankar says, "so the listeners also feel the same way."




INDIAN MUSIC AND JAZZ
Indian classical music has often been compared to jazz. In Indian music, the soloist introduces the raga, beginning slowly and then gradually increasing the energy. Then the tabla player enters with the rhythm. Next comes the "gat," or composed section. And finally, improvisation ensues. In spite of the similarities, Shankar emphasizes that the freedom of jazz improvisation differs greatly from Indian classical music, wherein musicians must preserve the conventions of the raga, with prescribed structures. Still, within those structures, Shankar says "the sky's the limit."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125507150

Ravi Shankar At 90: The Man And His Music

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty
Ravi Shankar turns 90 Wednesday. For more than 50 years, Shankar has been the man responsible for bringing Indian classical music to the West. He's collaborated with a stunning array of musicians, from The Beatles' George Harrison to jazz saxophonist Bud Shank; from violinist Yehudi Menuhin to composer Philip Glass.

In 2005, Shankar visited NPR's studio with his daughter, the sitar player Anoushka Shankar, and tabla virtuoso Tanmoy Bose for a different kind of collaboration. They joined radio host Fred Child for an hour of conversation, which included an engaging primer on Indian classical music and a performance. (Click the link at the top of this page.)

The Early Years
The world knows Shankar as a great master of the sitar, but his artistic life began as a dancer. When he was 10, he moved to Paris with his brother's dance troupe. "Being in the group with my brother, it was fantastic," he says. "I was raised in the whole atmosphere of dance and music."

Shankar was a promising dancer, even choreographing his own program. He was also playing the sitar and other traditional instruments, but dancing was his main focus from 1932 to 1938, when he toured with the troupe around the world, including five visits to the U.S. His first review in The New York Times came in 1932, when he was a 12-year-old dancer.

Dancing Reconsidered
Two years later, the dance troupe was joined by Allauddin Khan, a master of the sarod (a traditional northern Indian stringed instrument), which caused Shankar to reconsider his concentration on dance. Khan took Shankar under his wing and began mentoring the young musician in the sitar. "He always rebuked me, because I was always interested in so many things," Shankar says of his teacher. "He said, 'If you want to learn from me, you have to leave everything and give your whole energy to music.' "

After one year, Khan left the troupe, but his words continued to resonate with Shankar. When WWII forced the dance group to stop touring, Shankar went to Khan to study the sitar and spent the next seven years learning the instrument. The transition was difficult for Shankar, who had spent the previous touring years in five-star hotels and eating at the finest restaurants. The first year was the hardest, he says. Shankar practiced up to 14 hours a day under the careful guidance of his teacher. At night, he slept on a simple cot with snakes and cockroaches underfoot.

Music Ambassador, Teacher
Shankar's excellent musicianship, coupled with a keen and open mind, led him to experiment with elements of southern Indian music and styles of music from the West. He became the most recognized Indian classical musician in the world. Shankar is also a teacher; perhaps his most famous student was George Harrison, who had already begun playing the sitar before the two met in 1966. Shankar has also mentored his own daughter, Anoushka Shankar, in her study of the sitar. Shankar says he was hesitant to push the instrument on her, but at the insistence of his wife, he began teaching Anoushka when she was young.
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty
"The moment I started, I found her to be so talented," he says, "and that really inspired me." By age 13, Anoushka was already playing concerts with her father. Shankar took every opportunity to educate her about the instrument in a traditional guru-student relationship that continues to this day. "It just continues," Shankar says. "Same as I did with my guru until the last day of his life."

But Anoushka Shankar's path to mastering the sitar was far different from that of her father. She never slept on a hard cot with snakes and cockroaches for company, and she had a guru who happened to be her father. "From my perspective, it's been wonderful," she says, "because I end up having a relationship with him that most people don't get to have with a parent. And I also get a closeness to him that most people don't have with a guru. So on both sides, it's been very beautiful."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125507150