RAVI SHANKAR: AN
APPRECIATION India weeps for sitar
virtuoso By Priyanka Bhardwaj
The death of Pandit Ravi Shankar on
December 11 added another entry to a long list of
extraordinary Indian personalities lost in 2012.
Right up until his death at the age of 92,
the virtuoso had composed delicate and
sophisticated music for an audience that only grew
younger with time. The latter is a testimony to
the success of his brilliant blending of
contemporary music with timeless "ragas".
For the uninitiated, raga, meaning
color or beauty, is a scientific, precise, subtle
and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar
ascending and descending
movement consisting of either a full seven note
octave, with subtle differences in order of notes
that differentiate one raga from another.
Born on April 7, 1920 in Varanasi, Uttar
Pradesh to an exceptionally gifted Bengali Brahmin
family, Robindro Shankar Chowdhury, as he was
originally named, was the youngest of four
brothers.
Few know that Shankar's journey
in the world of art started as a dancer in his
elder brother, Uday Shakar's troupe as it toured
the United States and Europe in 1930s. This was
when Shankar learnt French, Western classical
music and jazz and met his guru, Baba Allaudin
Khan.
A former chief musician of a Indian
prince's court, Allaudin Khan took the young boy
under his wing and passed on to him a vast
knowledge of the musical traditions of
"Nawabi" (prince's court) and
"Tawaif" (the courtesan).
Years of
"riyaz" (practice) under a strict and
austere "gurukul" (vedic schooling)
tutelage bore fruit as Shankar went on to fuse the
duality of medium and message with his fine
exploration of depth and delicacy of
"bhava" (emotion or feeling) and
"swarupa" (movement), with each raga
transporting his listeners into a universe of
uninhibited "ananda" (happiness) and later
liberation.
Shankar would make full use of
ancient Hindu spiritual, Carnatic (South Indian
classical) rhythms and Hindustani folk traditions,
combining these with Muslim traditions and
referring to his musical path as one of the love
of God, similar to the Sufi pursuit of devotional
trance.
Immediately after his rigorous
training, Shankar was roped in to compose for the
Apu Trilogy, three Bengali films directed
by film maestro Satyajit Ray.
His scores
helped the films evoke sheer silver screen magic
in scenes such Durga and Apu, the protagonists,
running through a "kaash" flower-filled
expanse towards a speeding train, and when Durga's
mother bursts into tears on her death.
Other films decorated by Shankar's scores
include Debi, Jalsaghar, Neecha
Nagar, Dharti Ke Lal, Anuradha,
Meera and Kabuliwala. Not to forget
Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, for
which Shankar was nominated for an Oscar.
His first public performance was in 1939,
a "jugalbandi" (duet of two solo musicians)
with tabla genius Ali Akbar Khan. Then in 1944 he
moved to Mumbai where he briefly associated with
the Indian People's Theatre Association to compose
the tune for the patriotic poem Sare Jahan Se
Achcha.
However, the landmark year was
1952. That year, famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin's
invitation to work together could not be taken up
due to domestic pressures, but soon after Shankar
left his job as music director at All India Radio
for the shores of America where he first took to
teaching and then performed for smaller audiences.
However, this soon grew into large packed
concerts.
New York was a perfect choice
for him as the sitar had been relegated to the
background in India and there his records fetched
much international acclaim, even enabling him to
start a music school in Mumbai.
Many US,
Canadian and European films and ballets were
fascinated by his scintillating music and his
world famous concerts included a Concert for
Bangladesh in 1971, the Monterey Pop festivals in
1967 and 1968 and the Woodstock festivals in 1969.
His boundless energy, intelligence,
charisma and creativity brought about for the
first time in history a successful hybrid of
Eastern and Western cultures as he used new
technologies while without tampering with the
authenticity of ragas.
His
collaborations with the Beatles rock star George
Harrison, Philip Grass on the chamber music album
called Passages and with Menuhin awakened
the West to India as the land of renunciation and
peace.
He preferred unconventional
rhythmic novelties, in a marked distinction from
other sitar exponents. He repeated
jugalbandi styles and was known for
introducing a series of new ragas that included
Tilak Shyam, Nat Bhairav and
Bairagi.
Shanka won numerous
awards, including the Silver Bear Extraordinary
Prize at the 1957 Berlin International Film
Festival for his musical compositions in the movie
Kabuliwala, followed by the Sangeet Natak
Akademi Award in 1962. He also became a Fellow of
the Academy in 1975, and was awarded India's three
highest national civil honors: Padma Bhushan in
1967, Padma Vibhushan in 1981, and Bharat Ratna in
1999. There were also far too many prizes,
doctorates and accolades to list in one article.
Aside from his three Grammys, the US
Recording Academy also awarded him a posthumous
lifetime achievement award in December. The UNESCO
International Music Council also decorated him,
and in 2001 he became a Knight Commander of the
Order of the British Empire by Elizabeth II for
his "services to music".
Shankar gave
lessons in Indian classical music to the legendary
American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, who named
his son after him.
Shankar's life and
times are detailed in the three books he authored,
My Music, My Life and Raga
Mala (edited by Harrison, who gave him the
title of "Godfather of world music").
A
cursory peek into Shankar"s personal life reveals
his proclivity for free love, which was perhaps an
inspiration for him to experiment with music.
He shared his life with many partners and
wives, starting with his guru's daughter,
Annapurna Devi, who he married in 1941 and had a
son with named Shubhendra Shankar, born a year
later.
A relationship with the dancer
Kamala Shastri was followed by an affair with Sue
Jones, an American concert producer, which
resulted in birth in 1979 of his first daughter,
Norah Jones. She has gone on to win several Grammy
Awards in 2003 of her own.
Marital
stability came to the wandering soul only when
Sukanya Rajan entered his life and became his
second wife after having borne him a second
supremely gifted daughter Anoushka in 1981. She
stayed by his side until he succumbed to chest and
heart problems in Encinitas, California late last
year.
As luck would have it, Anoushka was
personally tutored in the sitar by her illustrious
father, who perhaps had some sense that in the
future she would want to follow in his footsteps.
Given her own proficiency in the art,
Anoushka's role could be extremely significant in
celebrating and carrying forward the rich legacy
of her father and in delighting and inspiring the
world with her sense of style, interpretation and
improvisation.
The father-daughter duo
have already been nominated for Best World Music
Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards.
Shankar
is survived by Sukanya, his wife of 23 years,
their daughter Anoushka Shankar Wright, Norah
Jones, another daughter from Sue Jones, and three
grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Priyanka Bhardwaj is a New
Delhi-based freelance journalist. She can be
reached at priyanka2508@yahoo.co.in.
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